UConn head coach Dan Hurley speaks to members of the media after a summer practice at the Werth Family Basketball Champions Center in Storrs, Conn., Friday, August 7, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
STORRS — The UConn men’s basketball team — the complete team, the finished team — was rolled out inside the Werth Champions Center on Friday afternoon.
There was a gathered crowd of donors and season ticket holders on hand. There was a physical scrimmage — summer Big East ball, if you will. Press conferences followed. The next time we see the Huskies in such a setting, the 2026-27 season will nearly be upon us.
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Expectations remain the same.
“I take the responsibility to maintain our level and never have people think that, as a program, we’ve taken our foot off the gas at all or that we’re reading … about how great we are and what we’ve been able to accomplish,” coach Dan Hurley said. “I mean, we’re very aware. We’ve been on a run of success that has been, probably, only matched by what Duke did in the 90s in terms of where we’ve been the last four years.
“We want to maintain it, build on that and try to separate ourselves that way. We know the odds are against us because, historically, people don’t stay there. We want to stay there. We want to be in contention every single year. Basketball is synonymous with the university and the state, how important it is for us to produce great seasons. The morale of the state, how much basketball identifies with the state — we feel that responsibility. We know we have to be ready for perform and give people something to be excited about November through April. We’re pushing hard for that.”
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UConn has been to the NCAA Tournament six years in a row, a program record. The Huskies won national championships numbers five and six in 2023-24 and have been to three of the past four Final Fours. This next team, like those before it and those that will follow it, expects to be play college basketball’s final weekend.
Annual success at this point is a product of momentum, but only partly in an age when rosters are rebuilt on professional budgets year in and year out. UConn has struck the right balance with player retention and acquisitions, augmenting the carry-over from one season with additions to the next.
UConn’s Braylon Mullins takes a shot during summer practice at the Werth Family Basketball Champions Center in Storrs, Conn., Friday, August 7, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
Out the door are Alex Karaban and Tarris Reed Jr. and others from a team that went 34-6 and reached the national championship game. Gone, too, are general manager Tom Moore and assistant coach Luke Murray, both pivotal in helping Hurley pull the program back up the mountain that Jim Calhoun first climbed and, still, not slowing down.
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Na’jai Hines and Nik Khamenia have arrived as established players out of the transfer portal. Colben Landrew and Junior County are promising freshmen. Silas Demary Jr. returns at point guard as, if all goes well, a Big East and/or national player of the year candidate. Sophomore Braylon Mullins opted to return as well, and he’s one of the best pure shooters in America.
This is the sort of roster put together over time, with careful consideration.
It is not a Plan B. It is not something slapped together last-minute. It is not a product of taking the best available leftovers, or the newest players deemed available at the 11th hour. This is a program adhering to a plans laid or envisioned back in 2018, when Hurley was hired.
It still works, even in the Wild Wild West of 2026. The NCAA’s new five-seasons-in-five years rule has taken effect and, already, it’s like anything else in college sports: confusing and complicated. Recent court rulings have granted temporary eligibility to some Class of 2022 players who had exhausted their eligibility under the previous, traditional framework.
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What that means is that a new pool of players is available to recruit.
With summer workouts just about over.
With exhibition games about two months away.
“The art of what we do has been cheapened a little bit,” Hurley said. “You can put together teams that can compete and not have to identify and develop young talent. You can screw up high school and portal recruiting, not have a very good team, and start plucking from a group of players in August and put together a team.
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“Let’s unleash 80 players into the sport in the first week of August. We can’t go on like this. And anyone who acts like it’s great, it’s good for college basketball, they’ve already taken the stance that this is what they’ve wanted, and now they’re just defending their position. It’s total chaos and it’s not sustainable.”
UConn head coach Dan Hurley speaks to members of the media after a summer practice at the Werth Family Basketball Champions Center in Storrs, Conn., Friday, August 7, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
A week remains in this summer session. The Huskies wrap up their work next Friday. Hurley and his assistants will be on vacation after that. Players, too. They’ll go their separate ways before reporting back for preseason camp and the fall semester.
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The UConn roster is good.
Whether UConn is a true national championship contender will become apparent months from now. Consider the Huskies well position to keep doing what they’ve been doing, though.
“There are days you walk out of here and you want to let the company that makes the banners know that we might have a shot,” Hurley said. “And there are days you walk out of here and think your team sucks and you want to beat your head against the wall because it was a disappointing day.”
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UConn will keep doing what it does.
The expectations don’t change even if the people change, the rules change, the landscape changes.
“You lose Luke, you lose Alex, you lost Tarris, you lose Tom,” Hurley said. “The program can’t get worse when those people depart. There’s an infusion of new talent that have got to help us in different ways. But to say if you’re going to lose people like that and it doesn’t hurt – it hurts. But you infuse new people in that also have ability, and other people have got to do more.”
Hurley mentioned operating in the same ways that made him successful as a high school coach and a low-Division I coach.
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“If somebody went back and watched a St. Benedict’s practice or a Wagner practice, they would come in and watch a UConn practice and say it sounds the same, it looks the same,” he said. “Maybe the practices are shorter, because back then I was practicing for like three and a half hours. I got a little smarter with practice length. Everything looks the same, it sounds the same. It’s just, we lost people.”
He went on to answer the next question but came back to this point.
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to be a worse team,” he said. “We expect to be in contention.”
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