Dan Hurley says UConn will not schedule groups with G League gamers in non-conference
Dan Hurley took fairly a fearless strategy in crafting this season’s UConn men’s basketball non-conference schedule, which incorporates 4 of the highest 5 groups from final 12 months’s KenPom effectivity rankings.
Famously, Hurley’s scheduling philosophy solely has one main pink line: multi-team occasions, swearing off these neutral-site tournaments after a memorable collapse on the 2024 Maui Invitational in favor of one-off video games towards marquee opponents. However, as school basketball reckons with the arrival of gamers who beforehand participated within the G League, a developmental minor league of the NBA, Hurley has began including extra restrictions when trying to find non-conference opponents.
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“From a non-conference standpoint, would I be leery of scheduling groups that G League gamers?” Hurley told Front Office Sports reporter Amanda Christovich at Thursday’s Big East Basketball Media Day. “I would not schedule groups in my non-conference which are doing that.”
From the G League’s inception in 2001, coming into the developmental division precluded gamers from later enjoying school basketball as a result of NCAA’s strict amateurism guidelines. However, because the NCAA started permitting athletes to revenue from NIL offers and a House settlement permitted direct revenue-sharing from colleges, these restrictions loosened, main a number of gamers with G League expertise to hitch school packages forward of the 2025-26 season.
Guard London Johnson dedicated to Louisville final October after enjoying with the Maine Celtics and Cleveland Charge, prompting a tirade from Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, panning the NCAA as “ridiculous” and “embarrassing” for granting Johnson eligibility – Hurley endorsed this perspective with a post on social media. Hurley additionally pushed again towards eligibility circumstances involving James Nnaji, who grew to become the primary NBA Draft choose to subsequently play school basketball, and Charles Bediako, who was granted a TRO to rejoin Alabama after leaving to pursue knowledgeable profession two seasons earlier.
Hurley’s staff will face loads of early-season challenges regardless of excluding these groups from the schedule, as UConn performs towards Michigan Nov. 5 at Boston‘s TD Garden, the primary on a listing of a number of blockbuster neutral-site opponents that features Duke in Las Vegas, Virginia at Madison Square Garden and a semi-road sport towards Illinois on the United Center. Otherwise, the Huskies will play three premier on-campus video games within the non-conference towards Kansas, Arizona and Ohio State.
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His G League remarks seemingly function one other veiled dig at St. John’s coach Rick Pitino, because the Red Storm roster consists of Babacar Sane, who’s at present eligible following a TRO after enjoying 75 G League video games, and 23-year-old G League veteran Quinn Ellis. Additionally, when speaking to CT Insider’s David Borges Wednesday about the recruitment of Seton Hall center Najai Hines, Hurley emphasised that his program didn’t lure gamers into this system, in contrast to different packages have completed to Seton Hall – probably the most notable such incident occurred two summers in the past, when the Pirates misplaced star level guard Kadary Richmond to St. John’s.
This article initially revealed at Dan Hurley says UConn won’t schedule teams with G League players in non-conference.
