RALEIGH, N.C. — There were tears, because there are supposed to be tears in a moment like this. There was intense, excruciating pain written all over the faces and croaking in the voices because it’s supposed to hurt when something this good comes to an end.
“I don’t want to take off this jersey,” Alex Karaban said, between sobs in the locker room. “I really don’t.”
The UConn men will not be moving on in the NCAA Tournament this year. After two years on college basketball’s highest peak, this March Madness ended for them with a 77-75 loss to No. 1 seed Florida in the second round of the West Regional. It ended with honor, the way a championship run is supposed to end. Hurley coached and the players played their tails off, but it came down, as most basketball games do, to one team simply not making enough shots, open or contested, where the other did. It ended though the Huskies, eighth seed and 9 1/2-point underdogs, controlled the game until the final few minutes.
UConn men’s basketball’s upset bid falls short as Huskies eliminated by No. 1 seed Florida, 77-75
“We definitely showed our courage, the fight of a Husky,” Solo Ball said, fighting off tears to speak. “When our backs were against the wall, when everyone was counting us out. Fought to the end of the game no matter what seed was next to our name, it didn’t matter. We were in the game the whole time, it didn’t matter. This is a team that fights the whole time.”
The fight had to end some time. It’s over now. This was the time to be sad it ended; in time, everyone involved will be glad it all happened.
“A lot of emotion, man,” said Hurley, who also struggled to hold back tears, on TV and in the interview room. “We’re a passionate program. The players play with it. I coach with it. You’re always (bleeping) drained when it’s over.”
Before he left the Lenovo Center, Hurley had already begun to recover and reclaim his familiar pride, defiance, combativeness that define him. More of that will come. Losing in the Round of 32 after 24 wins does not detract from the back-to-back championships, nothing ever can. It only enhances the achievement, as will become apparent in time.
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“Some one was going to have to put us down in this tournament,” Hurley said, in the hallway outside the locker room. “We were not going to go out like suckers, losing to a lower seed after what this program has accomplished, real banners, real championships, real rings.”
Was that in reference to Big East rivals like St. John’s, who knocked them off and won the league, but lost as a heavily favored No 2 seed to No. 10 Arkansas on Saturday? Or maybe to Creighton, which rubbed in a conference semifinal win over UConn with an unnecessary dunk at the buzzer? You can decide that, but we know that the three-year arc that included two titles and 13 straight NCAA Tournament wins in a row, 12 by double digits, won’t be soon matched or forgotten.
“It’s hard to win one game in this Tournament, man,” said Hurley. “It’s a bear.”
This quest for a three-peat, far more of a longshot than anyone wanted to acknowledge, went awry in November with three losses in Hawaii. Hurley and the Huskies spent the rest of the season trying to fix the problems, repair the damage. Getting a No. 8 seed in the Tournament meant UConn would draw the top seed in the second round, instead of later on, but with St. John’s losing, the road back to the Final Four looked somewhat open, if the Huskies could have pulled this big upset.
“We dragged them into the type of game that we wanted to drag them into,” Hurley said.
With so many open shots rattling off the iron, the Huskies might have been ahead by 15 or 20 instead of five or six in the second half. Then they went a long stretch without a field goal, and Florida made 10 of 13 shots down the stretch. Walter Clayton Jr., who was playing for Iona when UConn began its tournament winning streak in Albany in 2023, did the damage, scoring 23 points.
The Huskies gave up rebounds on missed free throws — the Gators missed 12 from the line — and Hurley was still upset over a no-call against Karaban while the Huskies were still up one, and he was still colorfully expressing his feeling to Baylor players and coaches as they took the court to play Duke. These are things Hurley will lament on the trip home and in the coming days. After everything that happened this season, UConn was that close to going back to the Sweet 16, to becoming the trendy team all over again, to waving to Rick Pitino from a plane to San Francisco.
That’s not to be. Instead, Hurley was looking to his left at Karaban, who scored 14, Samson Johnson, who played 24 minutes and got 10 points and 10 rebounds, despite foul trouble and getting pasted in the mouth until bloody, at Hassan Diarra, who played the most of the season, 32 minutes Sunday, on his sore knee. He was thinking back to the several players now in the NBA who started this remarkable three yeas.
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“They change your life,” Hurley said, tearing up again. “Young men like that change your life. I was a coach, not necessarily on the hot seat going into 2023, but until these men, until Alex Karaban put on the uniform, and Samson, the players change your life when you have such special people.”
After the game, he told CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson, “I couldn’t love a team more.”
Whether this all ended with another championship or with this excruciating loss in the second round, it was going to end, and the end was going to hurt. The time of your life always has to end, or else it wouldn’t be the time of your life. Those 13 games in March made Hurley a household name, all his quirks and traits subject for coast-to-coast debate. They prompted the Lakes to offer him the chance to coach LeBron James, and UConn to raise his salary into the top tier of college coaches.
It all really happened. The Huskies lost the way a championship team is supposed lose, with honor, the way the Yankees run of titles ended in Arizona in Game 7 in 2001, the way various NBA or NFL dynasties have ended, with another team rising up to the level to end it, nothing surrendered.
So this era is ended, everyone involved changed forever. Another is already beginning.
“This going to be an offseason when I’m able to do some rewiring, a lot of soul searching,” Hurley said. “And I’ll come back as a much improved coach. I didn’t enjoy the destination as much. I love the process, I loved the climb to get where we are, or now where we were now that this run has ended. And I’m excited to get back on the pursuit. The destination wasn’t as much fun, you just become a target for a lot of things.”
