UConn’s Dan Hurley Leads Trio of Former High School and Prep School Coaches Into Final Four

BOSTON -- Dan Hurley had just guided his No. 1 UConn Huskies to a 25-point destruction of Illinois in the East Regional final Saturday night at TD Garden when he referenced a critical part of his identity that may be lost on the average college basketball fan.

Hurley is a former history teacher and prep school coach at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark. He spent a decade honing his craft at the inner-city school from 2001-10, laying the groundwork for what eventually may result in multiple championships for him at UConn, and perhaps even induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame.

“I am who I am,” Hurley, the Jersey City native and former Seton Hall guard, told a group of reporters outside the UConn locker room Saturday night. “I’m basically a high school coach that’s like, masquerading up at this college level. I don’t really care what people necessarily think of my intensity or my passion. It obviously shows up the right way with my team…we don’t cheat, we don’t lie, I think we’re about all the right things. I’m just, at times, an a--hole.”

While Hurley may be the most fiery, intense and, yes controversial coach in the Final Four, he is certainly not the only former prep or high school coach still dancing.

He is joined by Alabama coach Nate Oats, who taught math and coached at Romulus High School in greater Detroit from 2002-13, and by N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts, who spent two separate stints at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia (1999-2001, 2003-11), winning two national prep championships (2004, 2008) and finishing second three other times (2005, 2006, 2009). The fourth coach in the Final Four, Purdue’s Matt Painter, began his coaching career in college.

“I hope that I’m inspiring a lot of people,” Keatts, a former guard at Division II Ferrum College (VA), said the day before his No. 11 Wolfpack knocked off No. 4 Duke, 76-64, to reach the program’s first Final Four since Jim Valvano’s team won the national championship in 1983. “There’s other ways to get there.

“You look across the country. Some of the best coaches in the world have come from the same path that I’ve traveled.”

‘I WAS ABLE TO LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES’

After his playing career, Dan Hurley was a high school assistant and teacher at St. Anthony’s -- where he taught sex ed to co-ed classes among other topics. He credits that experience with teaching him “how to keep an audience captivated.”

He then transitioned to a college assistant at Rutgers before he became the head coach at St. Benedict’s Prep, but he considers it a blessing that he was fired by Rutgers in 2001 -- after the infamous naked free-throw shooting controversy under then-coach Kevin Bannon. (Hurley says he was not in the gym when the incient took place).

At St. Benedict’s, he learned how to run his own program in the style of a small college, while coaching a slew of future high-major players like Samardo Samuels, Gregory Echenique, Corey Stokes, Lance Thomas, Eugene Harvey, David Cubillán, Zack Rosen and others. His teams were ranked as high as No. 2 nationally behind St. Anthony’s, the legendary Jersey City program coached by his father, Naismith Hall of Famer Bob Hurley Sr.

Because he had learned basketball the Hurley Way from his father as a guard at St. Anthony’s, Dan worked his players hard, emphasizing physicality, toughness and defense.

“During practice, there was no fouls, no out-of-bounds, so you had to play everything,” recalled former St. Benedict’s guard Tamir Jackson, who played for Hurley from 2005-09. “People elbowing each other, pushing each other, almost breaking into fights. But it was all to be tough and to be competitive...Our practices were always tougher than our games were.”

Jackson was there when Hurley famously kicked Tristan Thompson off the St. Benedict’s Prep team in February 2009.

“We were playing Passaic County Tech and we were already up big, so [Thompson] took a three and Coach Hurley took him out and said, “We don’t ever want to disrespect our opponent or disrespect the game,’” Jackson recalled. “And then [Thompson] got mad and tried to fight and I was the one who had to calm him down, brought him to the locker room. And that’s when Danny kicked him off the team.”

Thompson, of course, has gone on to have a long and solid NBA career, winning an NBA championship with the Cavaliers in 2016 alongside LeBron James and Kyrie Irving.

During Hurley’s tenure, a slew of high-major coaches, from Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski to Arizona’s Sean Miller to Villanova’s Jay Wright, came through the Newark school to recruit his players. Those coaches all saw how tight of a ship Hurley ran, and he was even offered several assistant coaching jobs at the college level.

“I was able to learn from my mistakes, develop a coaching personality of my own and then I was able to study a lot of college coaches that were coming in recruiting players from my program,” Hurley said earlier this season. “I think I learned from talking to those players that were recruited to a lot of places that what we were doing at St. Benedict’s was going to be very successful in college and that, given an opportunity at the college level as a head coach, I would just take the exact things I was doing late in my time at Benedict’s and take the exact some approach, take a high school approach to being a college coach.”

The man who offered Hurley his first college head coaching job was Wagner athletic director Walt Hameline, who took a risk in hiring a high school coach in 2010.

“Obviously, you knew about Danny and his dad and the whole family deal,” Hameline said. “And he was at Benedict’s and they were winning games...

“So Danny’s name come up and we just started kicking it around and he just started to check the boxes from the standpoint of playing experience. The guy played at St. Anthony’s, played with great players. He was a point guard [at Seton Hall], which I was always big on. And then who you knew. P.J. Carlesimo hired me [when he was the athletic director at Wagner] and so he knew about Danny.

“And the next thing you look at his coaching, he played for his dad and that whole culture, winning and toughness. And then he was at Rutgers for a little bit. And then he became a head coach at Benedict’s. Some of the best players in the country were there, and obviously he recruited those guys. And along with that, all the contacts he made with coaches throughout the country.”

Hameline said one of the coaches who vouched for Hurley was Villanova’s Wright, who would later coach against Hurley in the Big East and is now a friend and mentor.

After doing all his research, Hameline joked of the decision to hire Hurley, “If nothing else, maybe his father will send us players.”

‘BOBBY HURLEY GAVE ME A CHANCE’

When Hurley and Oats battle in the second national semifinal on Saturday in Glendale, Ariz., it will be a matchup not only of two former high school coaches, but two coaches whose careers are inextricably linked by one man.

In 2013, Bobby Hurley, Dan’s older brother and the point guard on Duke’s back-to-back national championship teams in 1991-92, was serving as an assistant coach to Dan at Rhode Island, having followed his brother to the Atlantic 10 school after first coming out of retirement from the basketball world to work under his brother at Wagner.

Bobby was recruiting a talented guard out of Romulus High named E.C. Matthews, who was coached by Oats. The elder Hurley was so impressed by Oats, that he became the head coach at Buffalo in 2013, he hired Oats to his staff.

Together, Hurley and Oats helped the Bulls earn their first Mid-American Conference championship and NCAA Tournament appearance while former Romulus star Justin Moss -- the MAC Player of the Year -- leading the way. Bobby Hurley is now coaching at Arizona State, which just happens to be hosting the Final Four.

When Bobby took the Arizona State job in 2015, Oats figured he would be a long shot to replace his boss at Buffalo since he had been coaching high school just a few years earlier.

But after speaking with the players, then-athletic director Danny White learned that they all wanted Oats as their next head coach.

“What stood out is the connections [Nate] had with our players,” White told ESPN.com in 2019. “His reputation as a high school coach -- most people I asked said he ran it like a Division I college program. Players had a strong relationship with him.”

In 2018, Oats led No. 13 Buffalo to a stunning upset of No. 4 Arizona in the Big Dance. A year later, Oats took over at Alabama and all he’s done is help turn the school from a purely football one into a university making its first Final Four appearance. Oats is 117-53 in five years at Alabama, with two Sweet 16s and now a chance to play for the national championship.

After Alabama knocked off Clemson in the West Regional Final Saturday night in Los Angeles, Oats reflected on the journey that brought him to a Final Four matchup with Dan Hurley.

“I mean, it’s surreal,” Oats said. “You go back 11 years ago, and I won a state championship at Romulus back in the Detroit area. It hasn’t been that long. And Bobby Hurley gives me a chance. Obviously the Hurley family has got a lot of respect for high school coaches. Their dad is a Hall of Fame coach. And I caught a few breaks.”

He added that it should “give hope to a lot of high school coaches tonight, that’s for sure.”

Aaron Estrada, a fifth-year college guard from Woodbury, N.J., transferred from Hofstra to Alabama after last season. He knew playing time would be available since Alabama had lost eight players -- along with three coaches. But he also liked Oats’ message.

“I believed him from the first time I spoke to him, honestly,” Estrada said. “I believed the vision. The work was evident. He had the No. 1 team in the country for a good portion of the year. I had no doubt. I think it was pretty easy for me to make my decision to come here.”

‘I DROVE THE BUS. I PUMPED THE GAS. I SWEPT THE FLOOR’

Keatts became the third former high school coach to reach this year’s Final Four when his Wolfpack won their ninth straight postseason game Sunday night by eliminating Duke in the Elite Eight.

The team’s first two victories in the NCAA Tournament triggered a two-year extension on Keatts’ contract.

“These guys are so special,” Keatts said after taking N.C. State to its first Final Four in 41 years. “What is it, nine now? Nine elimination games or you go home.”

About a decade ago, roughly the same time span that Hurley was coaching at St. Benedict’s and Oats at Romulus, Keatts was racking up prep championships and prep Final Four appearances at Hargrave.

But he was also doing all the little things -- the devil is in the details -- to help him learn how to run his own program.

“I drove the bus at Hargrave,” Keatts recalled. “I pumped the gas. I swept the floor. I washed the clothes. I did this, the good Lord, put me in this spot, so I’m glad to be here.”

In 2011, during his second stint at Hargrave, Keatts got a call from then-Louisville coach Rick Pitino offering him a job as an assistant coach.

“He was a passionate, hungry and driven prep school coach,” Pitino told NJ Advance Media of Keatts.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Keatts had an in with some elite prep school players, like Montrezl Harrell and Luke Hancock, both of whom ended up playecritical roles on Louisville’s 2013 national championship team coached by Pitino.

Keatts leveraged his success at Louisville to become the head coach at UNC-Wilmington in 2014. In three seasons, he went 72-28 with two NCAA Tournament appearances.

In 2017, when Keatts was hired at N.C. State, Pitino called it a “great” hire.

It has taken some time, but that prediction appears to have come to fruition. Keatts had never won an NCAA Tournament game before this season. Now he has won four with an older group of players led by DJ Burns Jr. and DJ Horne, who combined for 49 points against Duke.

Pitino had to smile, too. Keatts is the fourth Pitino assistant to coach a team to a Final Four, following Tubby Smith, Billy Donovan and Mick Cronin.

‘I’M HUMBLED IN HIS PRESENCE’

Back in Boston, Bob Hurley Sr., one of just three high school coaches in the Naismith Hall of Fame, flashed a smile as big as the moon after UConn’s destruction of Illinois sent the program to its seventh Final Four.

He stood on the court beaming while answering questions about his younger son, the one who emerged from the shadows of his famous father and famous older brother to get to the brink of doing something no coach has done since the mid 2000s --- win back-to-back NCAA championships.

“That shadow stuff is long gone,” Bob Sr. said of Dan. “He’s an outstanding coach, and I’m humbled in his presence. What he does at the college level, the culture and everything about it, it’s just amazing.”

Dan Hurley’s accomplishments so far are greater than those of Oats and Keatts, but all three men can serve as beacons of hope for a legion of high school and prep coaches out there.

Kevin Boyle, Bob Hurley’s former arch-nemesis in the New Jersey high school ranks, is as accomplished and skilled a coach as there is at any level of basketball and has turned Montverde (FL) Academy into the premier national prep powerhouse.

Now Boyle, and every other prep and high school coach in America will watch Dan Hurley, Nate Oats and Kevin Keatts coach in the Final Four.

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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com.