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How Dan Hurley built UConn into an offensive juggernaut

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“Without a high-powered offense and being able to score the ball,” Hurley told FOX Sports, “you can’t win a six-game tournament.”

Hurley knew that Hawkins was someone who would catalyze change. A 6-foot-5, 185-pound gunner, Hawkins had attempted more shots from beyond the arc than inside it during a modest freshman season. But the coaches saw enough behind the scenes to believe they’d found the sport’s best movement shooter in a decade, the kind of player capable of running defenders ragged off screens and then punishing them with barrages of 3-pointers necessitated by the analytical and international concepts UConn vowed to fuse. Hurley showed Hawkins just how many 3-pointers Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry — both of the Golden State Warriors in the NBA — had attempted during their respective college careers. “You’ve got to get this many,” Hurley said.

The desire to showcase Hawkins’ 3-point shooting was about far more than simply maximizing the talents of an ascending player — though that, too, proved prescient as Hawkins went on to bury 109 3-pointers in 39 games, six shy of the program’s single-season record, while leading UConn to its fifth national championship. More broadly, Hurley’s choice reflected his deepening commitment to a multi-year philosophical shift on the offensive end of the floor, an evolution designed with greater NCAA Tournament success in mind.

Hurley and his assistants envisioned a movement-based offense that emphasized off-ball screening over isolation plays or traditional pick and rolls. They dreamed of a roster stuffed with high-level passers, shooters and “game processors” who could operate a system culled largely from overseas concepts. Change arrived in the form of a four-pronged plan that would touch nearly every corner of the program: from rewriting the core offensive principles to revising the player profiles used in recruiting; from reconfiguring the coaching staff’s study habits to rearranging the way practice time was apportioned.