Dan Hurley Exposes One Flaw Holding UConn Back
In this story:
The UConn Huskies may be sitting at 9-1 with a barrage of ranked wins, but Dan Hurley isn’t letting anyone get comfortable. The Huskies have been shooting the lights out, defending at an elite clip, and closing tight games, but on the glass, they’ve been playing catch-up far more often than a top-10 team should. And Hurley knows it, all too well.
Not so long ago, after taking down the Florida Gators, Hurley spoke to the press and went on to reveal his biggest concern with his team.
“I would say my biggest concern right now is the rebounding. We were minus-20 versus Arizona, with obviously no Tarris, and then we gave up 16 offensive rebounds in a game where the goal is to try to hold them to eight. So we’re minus-12 on the glass. That’s a concern, that’s probably my biggest concern,” Hurley said.
That concern was fully exposed in the win over No. 18 Florida. UConn controlled the early lead but nearly let it slip because it simply couldn’t secure the misses. Florida made 40 rebounds to UConn’s 28, including 16 offensive boards.
The Huskies survived 77–73 because they hit big shots and not because they won the physical battle. Hurley’s concern makes more sense when one looks at the game logs. The Arizona match had a 23–43 rebounding deficit.
The BYU matchup was only slightly better, with UConn being edged 27–28 despite controlling most other parts of the game. Even in wins over Columbia and Bryant, where UConn held comfortable margins on the scoreboard, they still allowed stretches of second-chance opportunities.
Season-long totals look good at first with 36.0 rebounds per game and a +4.6 margin, but those averages smooth over volatile game-to-game swings. The sad part is that UConn's individual doesn’t lack rebounding talent.
Tarris Reed Jr. averages 7.6 boards, Alex Karaban pulls 5.4, and Silas Demary Jr. chips in 4.5 as a guard. The problem is consistency. One night, they look elite. The next night, they’re giving up 12+ offensive rebounds to a team they outshoot and outplay.
And as UConn pushes deeper into the most brutal stretch of its schedule, Hurley knows those inconsistencies can flip a game. Which is why every win right now ends with the same question: can this team fix the one thing keeping it from being unstoppable?
Dan Hurley Predicts UConn in Top-10 Defense After Rebounding Fix
The irony is that Hurley can rave about almost every other part of his team, especially the defense. As Hurley himself puts it, “I think when it's all said and done, we're going to have a top-five, top-10 defense and a top-five, top-10 offense.”
And the analytics agree. UConn sits 7th in KenPom, powered by the No. 14 offense and the No. 7 defense, numbers that place them squarely in the national-title tier. However, that defensive ceiling only becomes a reality once the rebounding stabilizes.
And right now, the NCAA numbers show exactly why Hurley keeps pushing. In rebounds per game, UConn has no players inside the top 100. As a team, they rank 149th in defensive rebounds per game at 25.78, an uncomfortable placement for a squad with championship expectations.
Meanwhile, in the NCAA’s NET Rankings, UConn sits at No. 7, boasting a strong 3–1 record in Quad 1 games, despite this flaw looming overhead. And as Hurley himself said in an earlier interview, “Last year, we could literally never win a game with our defense. Here, our defense shows up.”
Once the Huskies fix their rebounding trouble, the rest of the nation will have few flaws left to point out or exploit.
-fd44250df32912986cc6690f0b8bfa32.png "Shivani Menon")
Shivani Menon is a sports journalist with a background in Mass Communication and a passion for storytelling. She has written for EssentiallySports, College Sports Network, and PFSN, covering Olympic sports like track and field, gymnastics, and alpine skiing, as well as college football, basketball, March Madness, and the NBL Draft. When she's not reporting, she's either on the road chasing sunsets or getting lost in the rhythms of electronic soundscapes.