Dan Hurley Feels ‘Horrible’ About Tunnel Incident Involving Reporter, UConn Employee

The UConn coach spoke honestly about his viral, NSFW rant and the consequences that followed.

Hurley's UConn team was unable to complete the three-peat / Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

UConn's incredible multi-season run of dominance came to a crashing end on Sunday, when the two-time defending champion Huskies fell to No. 1 Florida, 77-75. Dan Hurley, living up to his reputation as a particularly fiery head coach, went viral after the loss for ripping the referees as he went through the tunnel to the locker room.

Normally that's about where the story ends, but this time the situation snowballed. Hurley's rant was taped by a reporter in the tunnel, resulting in the UConn head of men's basketball communications threatening him in an attempt to get the video taken down. But the clip stayed up and the reporter later announced that the UConn employee had apologized for his actions.

Speaking on the whole debacle on Wednesday evening, Hurley expressed his remorse for how things unfolded.

"(UConn head of men's basketball communications) Bobby (Mullen) regrets, just like I regret the moments I've had," Hurley said to reporters, per ESPN. "Obviously it's all my fault that Bobby got pulled into it. 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."

However, Hurley was also quick to defend that section of the arena as a space for "combatants" and not for cameras.

"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," he said. "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."

The controversy seems to have fizzled down at this stage. But as Hurley noted in his availability, UConn knows exactly what it is getting into with him driving the bus.

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