No. 15 UConn will look to break out of its recent slump on Wednesday at Seton Hall after losing four of its last five, but will have to do so without its top two coaches on the bench. The school announced Wednesday morning, roughly seven hours before scheduled tipoff in Newark, New Jersey, that both head coach Dan Hurley and associate head coach Kimani Young will miss the game after testing positive for COVID-19.
Assistant coaches Tom Moore and Luke Murray will assume coaching duties for UConn in the absence of Hurley and Young. Moore was an assistant coach on Jim Calhoun’s UConn staff from 1994-2007 before spending a decade as head coach at Quinnipiac. He then joined Hurley’s staff at Rhode Island before following him to UConn when he took the Huskies job in 2018. Murray worked under Hurley at both Wagner and Rhode Island, and also served on Moore’s staff at Quinnipiac. He spent three seasons at Louisville as an assistant before joining Hurley’s UConn staff in 2021.
UConn began its season unranked but rose to as high as No. 2 in the AP Top 25 poll after a 14-0 start overall and 3-0 start in Big East play. It has fallen on hard times the last three weeks, though, with four losses in five games to push it 3.5 games back from first place in the league’s regular-season race. The Huskies have lost their last two games, including to St. John’s as a heavy home favorite over the weekend, but enter Wednesday as a 5-point favorite over the Pirates, according to Caesars Sportsbook.
