ESPN report: UConn, Dan Hurley agree to new six-year contract extension after winning 2023 title

UConn is rewarding head coach Dan Hurley for winning the 2023 title with a six-year contract extension, per Adrian Wojnarowski.

The contract is going to make Hurley one of the highest-paid college basketball coaches. He is guaranteed $33 million over the course of the contract, which runs through the 2028-29 college basketball season. It also includes incentives that could raise the amount of money he earns over the course of the contract.

UConn is giving Dan Hurley this contract after winning a national championship in part to reward that performance and also in part to prevent another program from potentially luring him away in the future.

Prior to coaching at UConn, Hurley was the head coach at Wagner and Rhode Island. He turned both of those programs into powers in their respective conferences quickly, even leading Rhode Island to the second round of the NCAA Tournament twice. That ability to rebuild programs is what landed him the UConn job. The Huskies under Kevin Ollie in the AAC had struggled to reach their goals.

Along with returning to the Big East, Dan Hurley has helped UConn become a consistent NCAA Tournament team. 2023 was the first year the Huskies got out of the first round under Hurley, breaking out into a long and dominant run for the championship.

Hurley has a 104-55 record at UConn in five seasons. He is the son of Bob Hurley Sr., a Hall of Fame coach. His brother is Bobby Hurley, the head coach at Arizona State.

Three Huskies from last season’s team, guards Jordan Hawkins and Andre Jackson Jr. and center Adama Sanogo are expected to be drafted in the NBA Draft. Still, Hurley has brought in tons of talent and UConn is expected to be one of college basketball’s best teams for 2023-24.

Dan Hurley on how the transfer portal and NIL impacted their run

During the NCAA Tournament, Dan Hurley opened up about how both the transfer portal and NIL impacted their run to the national championship.

“It’s weird, I guess. We’re not paying much attention to it, but obviously we saw some high profile players today going to the portal on Twitter. And I think who knows where this thing is going to go. For us, I don’t want a kid to pick my school because we matched an NIL offer or we gave the best offer. I want kids to come to UConn because they want to play for me. And obviously you hope that they can take the best possible advantage of NIL,” Hurley said.

“But times are changing. And it will be interesting to see whether people still do it regular kind of the way we’ve done it. We don’t have a player on our team that is at UConn because of NIL. And we’re still going to do it with high level high school recruits that we’re going to develop over the course of time and supplement those guys with transfers out of the portal that make sense for our culture and the way that we run our program, which is more old school.”