Some background on Luke Murray for those interested. He’d be the only assistant coach we should consider, imo. He has a great offensive mind and schemes, is known as a great recruiter, and has been an assistant at not just one but several successful programs (UConn, Xavier, Louisville). Meaning, he knows what it takes to win and has been part of different staffs that have proven it. He was the guy who got Hurley to finally adopt a modern offense using analytics, lots of sets and motion, and to teach it all differently. They identified high IQ players, too. It can’t hurt that he has a famous father who’s a beloved actor. I first read the article below when it was as published, and it made me realize that Murray could be the guy. I still want Schertz, btw. But Murray could be our Tommy Lloyd.
Dan Hurley and assistant coach Luke Murray devised an offense heavy on off-ball screening and cuts, and it may lead to back-to-back titles.
www.nytimes.com
Some choice quotes:
“It’s like learning a language,” Hurley says.
The new offense, heavy on off-ball screening and movement, won the Huskies a national title in 2023. Then last summer, Hurley essentially ripped up the UConn dictionary and came up with a new glossary of terms.
“We do that because of paranoia,” says assistant coach Luke Murray, who acts as the program’s offensive coordinator.
It’s probably not necessary, because UConn’s choreographed sets leave opponents’ heads spinning already. Defending UConn is like trying to multitask inside a classroom full of screaming children.
…
It takes three or four viewings to figure out exactly what’s happening. Now imagine trying to defend all of that in real-time.
“I’ve been studying the top offenses in the country in-depth for the past five years, and UConn’s combination of off-ball screening and ball movement within their sets and the number of sets that they run makes it the most complex offense that I’ve seen in that time,” says Jordan Sperber, a former video coordinator at New Mexico State who has become the X’s-and-O’s czar of college basketball, documenting it all in his weekly Hoops Vision newsletter. Sperber made a UConn offense video last month titled “Why This Offense is Basketball Poetry.”
“Their halfcourt offense is picturesque,” Xavier coach Sean Miller says.
…
At Rhode Island, Hurley had played a lot of four-and-around-one with a heavy dose of ball-screen offense. He carried the ball-screen concepts over to UConn, but now he had two posts on the floor. Spacing was a problem. Hurley wanted to go to a more modern approach with four perimeter players, and he brought on Murray to help him with the offense. Murray had been with Hurley in his first season as a college head coach at Wagner in 2010-11.
…Murray rejoined Hurley in April 2021, but they couldn’t institute the plan right away because Hurley felt loyalty to senior forward Isaiah Whaley. Also, point guard RJ Cole was best operating out of ball screens, so UConn played a traditional two-big lineup and leaned on the pick-and-roll.
But in the summer of 2022, the plan was put in place. The Huskies had an elite shooter in Jordan Hawkins, who was perfect as a marksman they could run off screens and use his gravity to open others. Then they also had the ideal stretch four in Karaban, a freshman who graduated early and showed up at semester break during the 2021-22 season.
“It was really clear that we were going to move to a much more of an off-ball screening identity,” Murray says.
Hurley and Murray studied European teams, stealing different concepts and packages that they could use.
“It’s not like a replica necessarily,” Murray says. “It’s just piecing together what makes the most sense for the group that we have.”
Murray says that the Huskies take a lot of pride in their defense, which ranks fourth nationally, but he estimates practices are a 65-35 split between offense and defense.
“You can have the greatest concepts in the world, but guys have to be able to execute them with intelligence, and with a knack for timing and spacing and really having a great understanding of how they’re being defended,” Murray says. “That’s one of the things that we try to emphasize a lot in game prep. Most scouting is based on what the other team is running. For us, we talk a lot about the way that the other team is guarding us.”
www.espn.com
