Patience is key as UConn men's basketball team looks to rebuild roster

Apr. 20—STORRS — Patience. The old adage says it's a virtue.

For UConn men's basketball coach Dan Hurley, patience is something that will be the key as he looks to rebuild the Huskies' roster for the 2023-24 season.

"It's not easy for me because as you can tell patience is not my greatest virtue, and it's not for our fans or for my staff," Hurley said following Thursday's practice at the Werth Center. "But we're all going to have to be patient, and everyone will have to occasionally just look up at the (2023 national championship) banner or the trophy any time they start to lose patience or lose their mind. Just look up there, or get a replica."

In the 2 1/2 weeks since UConn captured its fifth national championship, its roster has been in a state of upheaval.

Six players — Joey Calcaterra, Jordan Hawkins, Adama Sanogo, Nahiem Alleyne, Richie Springs and Yarin Hasson — have departed for various reasons.

Calcaterra is out of collegiate eligibility, Hawkins and Sanogo have foregone their remaining eligibility and will enter the NBA Draft. Alleyne, Springs and Hasson have entered the transfer portal.

Two other players, Tristen Newton and Andre Jackson, have also declared for the draft, but are keeping their eligibility, giving them the option to return to school. They'll have to make a final decision by May 31.

But Hurley isn't necessarily worried about the roster turnover.

"I think everything that has happened to this point is exactly what we thought was going to happen," he said. "I said this through the course of the year. You could anticipate in January who's going to end up going into the portal: a player that's older that's looking at a situation where maybe they're at the end of their career and they want a bigger role. They're more than likely going to move on.

"For us I think we anticipated having a national championship year, this is what elite programs face. They face players leaving early for the NBA, they face players going through the draft process and maintaining eligibility. Obviously there's usually major staff moves. At this point, we're fortunate to be intact there. But it's the reality of being an elite program now. That's where we're at. We'll deal with this every year."

Having to replenish his roster is nothing new for Hurley. Entering the 2022-23 campaign, Jackson, Sanogo and Hawkins were the only players who had seen consistent playing time the previous season

Hurley and his staff made great use of the transfer portal to help bolster that group. Calcaterra, Newton, Alleyne and Hassan Diarra all transferred to UConn.

"We learned a lot about roster construction," Hurley said. "We learned a lot about personalities. We learned a lot about how we want to set-up our team at both ends of the court in terms of the skills and the way we want to play. We want to mirror the way we just played it, and make some just adjustments in personnel."

Five scholarship players — rising senior Diarra, junior Samson Johnson, and sophomores Alex Karaban, Donovan Clingan and Apostolos Roumoglou — are set to return.

"We've had those meetings and it looks like that's where we're at with the group and we go forward," Hurley said. "I mean they see an opportunity at their particular position. There's going to be opportunities on the perimeter, there's going to be opportunities in the frontcourt. We've lost some people, but we obviously have some tremendous returners."

Karaban and Clingan, who both had a large impact on UConn's success this season, are the players around whom Hurley intends to build next season's team.

At the same time, he's thankful the other three elected to stay.

"You credit people that don't want to leave this level," Hurley said. "People that believe that they can earn the role that they want and not leave this level and that also want the responsibility of keeping a program at the level that it's at. I just have a ton of respect for guys like Hassan, Samson and Apostolos for wanting to earn their way on the court for the defending national champs. It's great."

Hurley will also have five incoming freshmen: Stephon Castle, Solomon Ball, Jaylin Stewart, Jayden Ross and Youssouf Singare. The Huskies' 2023 recruiting class is ranked third nationally by 247Sports.com.

"I think we have a lot of flexibility," Hurley said. "I think guys like Alex and Jaylin Stewart have the flexibility to play on the perimeter, They're both super-skilled. They both can shoot, which opens up minutes at the 4 (position). Then Samson (6-foot-10, 215 pounds) obviously can play either frontcourt position. I think he's intent to try to really build up his body in the weight room. Donovan is not going to be able to be a 32-to-34-minute-a-game player, nor do we want him to be. We want Donovan to be able to be in that 26-28 minute range in a perfect world."

But what Hurley does on the recruiting trail — both in the transfer portal and for future high school classes — depends on the looming decisions of Jackson and Newton.

"It's hard because if you try to recruit a player right now, if you're looking for some type of piece, it's hard to give them a vision of what they're walking into when you have one of the best point guards in the country in Tristen and then you have one of the best all-around perimeter people in the country (Jackson) both in the draft process," Hurley said. "It's hard to recruit with that type of uncertainty."

While he said he'd obviously love to have both Newton and Jackson back in the fold, Hurley admitted that wouldn't be the best-case scenario.

"Obviously in a perfect world, Tristen turns himself into a draft pick like Tyrese (Martin) did, and Andre becomes a first-round pick," Hurley said. "I mean in a perfect world that's what happens. Obviously that's not in the best interest of our season next year, but it's in the best interest of our program because of everything those two guys have done for us."

Hurley said that the roster turnover hasn't impacted workouts much. If anything, it may have helped crystallize his plans moving forward.

"I just think we were so intent last year to get to 13 (scholarship players) for practice purposes," he added. "I would say for a variety of reasons maybe you think about the roster being 11 or 12 and just make sure the walk-ons can help you in practice because there are other considerations. Like it just puts you in a situation where more people are going into the portal. There's also NIL there where now you have more people. I don't know that we'll be as focused on trying to get to the maximum number as we are just feeling great about our team."

When asked if he had a date in mind when his roster and staff would be finalized, Hurley said, "I don't think we necessarily know when it's all going to come together."

He brought up how it took until June to get a commitment from Calcaterra. The team got one from Roumoglou, its final scholarship player, on Sept. 9.

"For us, it's going to be uncertain for the next month in terms of what it's going to totally look like on the court," Hurley said. "But the staff and the fans, this group just delivered you a national championship. I think we owe it to the program to be a little more patient."

Worth quoting

"Listen, your NIL has got to be strong in today's game to stay at this level. Our NIL, our collective here is going to have to be really strong. I've said this a lot, I don't want it to be a reason why players come here. I want players to want to play for me. I want players that want to play for this storied program. I want players to want to be part of our culture. I want players to see this as a place where they can develop and become NBA players where the big, big life-changing opportunities are in their career.

"But we also don't want to lose players because of it in terms of retention. But I don't want it to be the primary reason, as the type of coach that I am, that that's why players want to come here." — Hurley on his team's approach to name-image-likeness deals moving forward.

For coverage of UConn football and men's basketball as well as area high school and local youth sports, follow Adam Betz on Twitter: @AdBetz1, Facebook: Adam Betz — Sports Writer, and Instagram: @AdBetzJI.