STORRS, Conn. – Dan Hurley turned the corner into the lobby of the Werth Basketball Center and saw a large gathering of reporters and news cameras huddled around the spot near the wall where he was meant to stand and speak. He was going to wrap up the 2024-25 UConn men’s basketball season and give a look into what’s ahead.

“Oh wow, I’m not retiring,” he quipped when he saw the size of the crowd.

UConn has been one of the top stories in college basketball since Sunday’s second-round exit at the hands of No. 1 seed Florida.

But rather than the program’s historic run being at the center of the conversation, it was Hurley’s passion and emotion boiling over on the way off the court that dominated online chatter.

The video of Hurley yelling to the Baylor team before it took the court for its game against Duke, saying, “I hope they don’t (expletive) you like they (expletive) us,” had been viewed more than 1.3 million times by Wednesday afternoon. And the cycle of talking heads psychoanalyzing the Huskies’ head coach started all over again.

“Those are three great officials on that game, so, although I said something in the heat of the moment, in an area of the arena that in pretty much every game I’ve ever coached in college has been media-free. Past the tunnel, by the locker rooms, in the hallway where the coaches go, that’s for the combatants, that’s for the competitors. That’s not for camera phones,” he said. “Just relative to that, those were three great refs and Florida earned it.

“If I don’t go off the rails at the end there, after that three-year run ended in excruciating fashion. … If I don’t have that emotional outburst there, probably all people are talking about is the run we’ve had, the amazing players.”

Fuel was added to the conversation on Monday, when it was revealed that UConn’s Sports Information Director Bobby Mullen confronted the Carolina-based reporter who took the viral video, allegedly telling him he’d “ruin” his life if he didn’t take it down.

“Bobby regrets, just like I regret the moments I’ve had. Obviously it’s all my fault that Bobby got pulled into it,” Hurley said. “I set the whole thing in motion and I feel horrible. Obviously he could’ve handled dealing with the media person with the phone that took the video (differently), he could’ve obviously let it go. He should’ve been better trained for a situation like this, we’ve been in them all year.

“But Bobby’s a soldier. We all fight like that for each other in our program, and sometimes we go a little too far. But Bobby’s a great guy.”

Mullen later reached out and apologized to the reporter. Hurley said Mullen has been receiving “vicious” messages and emails from “really horrible people, really empty people,” in the days since. “I just can’t imagine just the sadness of those people and how empty their lives are and how sad their pursuits are that they’re doing that to him,” he said. “But I did that to Bobby. Bobby’s a good person.”

After the moment took place, Hurley went into the postgame press conference and shed a tear as he reflected on the impact of his players. He spoke to local media in that same hallway, saying there would be some “rewiring” that needed to be done as he’d gotten caught up in the tidal wave of success.

“That was one last final act there on the way out. It’s a microcosm of how it went from Maui. Just figured I’d close the show for everybody there,” he said. “It’s tough for a person like me. It’s my rocket fuel. It’s what makes me successful in large part, the intensity, the desire, the competitive fire, it’s what attracts my players to me, it’s what’s been able to attract success for me, this aspect as a coach. But at times, yeah, I’ve got to apologize to my wife and say, ‘I’m sorry, I was embarrassing. I shouldn’t have said that.'”

Hurley has been, for the most part, the same fiery figure since he started coaching. Now after winning back-to-back national championships, he’s one of the faces of the sport, in a spotlight that he admits he wasn’t quite prepared for.

“This is what UConn knew they were getting, this is how I’ve coached obviously my entire career – and I’m not bragging about that, I’m just surprised that people just discovered it if they’re college basketball experts,” he said. “It’s one of those things where, they’re mistakes, there are things I wish I didn’t do, it’s part of what you get with me. I hope to not do it again. I’m going to attempt to take measures both internally, mentally, and externally. … I wouldn’t change one aspect of how I coach a game or how hard we fight. (But) I’d like to get on and off the court without incident.”

“My players love playing for me. I don’t think I’m a bad guy – I’m not a victim, I do stupid (things) sometimes. But it’s not like I’m some like phony, fake, cheater. You could talk more about people with those attributes than somebody that maybe tells a fan who’s been cursing them out the whole game, ‘Screw you.’ I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world. But you take account of it. You don’t want to be a distraction to your team too and bring more weight to your players.”

The end-of-season conversations have begun amongst the roster, as UConn steps into the chaos that is an offseason in this transfer portal and NIL-dominated era of roster building. While managing the program like an NBA organization, Hurley says he’ll work to lessen the off-court distractions that followed him all season long.

“My style and everything I bring to the table also created a tremendous amount of external (noise) which probably affected the team at different times this year, too, and certainly it had its effects on me,” he said. “You go into the offseason … there are certainly ways I can learn from this year and get better, but not change the way I go about things as a coach. Because it’s been successful.”

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