STORRS, Conn. — In the exhilaration of the post-championship locker room, Andre Jackson Jr.’s heartstrings were pulled hard in one direction. He won two championships in high school, and he wanted to do the same at UConn.
“Only way I’m not coming back is if Coach tells me to leave,” Jackson said.
Run it back, everyone was saying. But when coach Dan Hurley read Jackson’s quotes, he was a little concerned. He gave Jackson a few days to calm down, then the day before the parade they had the conversation.
“Andre needed a little nudge,” Hurley said. “Look, he loves it here. His heart is here, his heart will always be here, but he owes it to himself, at this point in his career, with everything he has accomplished at his age, to really go for it right now, and to dive in full body and not have one foot in with us. Really go for it.”
Maybe another coach would have handled this differently. Maybe another coach would look up at the 2023 championship banner, as Hurley did at the Werth Center on Thursday, and imagine instead how much the chances of hanging another one in 2024 would increase with a fourth year of Andre Jackson at UConn.
But Hurley’s relationships with his players, and especially this player, just wouldn’t allow for that. Jackson declared his intention to test the NBA draft waters last week, and though the door behind him is open more than ajar, he will take Hurley’s admonition and look ahead, look beyond the safe nest in Storrs, and not peer back over his shoulder. It’s time.
“He needs our support,” Hurley said, “because he’s not going to be at his best in those NBA workouts, and I don’t think it’s right for his college coaches to be working against what’s in his best interests, as much as it is in UConn’s best interests.”
Almost from the day he came to UConn in March 2018, Hurley set his sights on Jackson, then at Albany Academy. Assistant coach Tom Moore did much of the ground work, but Hurley handled a lot of the recruiting personally, right up to the weekend visit in September 2019 that closed the deal.
It was obvious they were kindred spirits and if you peel away the layers and get to the core of this championship team, the relationship between Hurley and Jackson is what controlled the heartbeat.
“It’s different with him,” Hurley said. “Even the ones you love, you develop that strong bond, that strong connection, with him it’s different because in the recruiting process, me and him, we built it there. I went and saw him the maximum of seven times that you can see an underclassman, I made the phone calls. I built a relationship with him, his family is like my family, they might as well be from Jersey City.”
Hurley never thought about naming captains until Jackson played for him.
“He’s a fiery guy, and I’m fiery, especially when I play basketball,” Jackson said April 8. “We have similar personalities. We come together, he just respects my effort and I respect his effort to hold me to a standard. That’s definitely my guy, and I feel like we have a relationship, player to coach, that’s just as close as any relationship I’ve ever had with a coach.”
So when they sat and talked about the future, between the Final Four’s conclusion and the victory parade, it was more than coach and player, it was man to man, heart to heart.
Seven players are leaving Hurley, or could be. All are in different situations. Jordan Hawkins’ decision to enter the draft and hire an agent was a no-brainer and he made it quickly, with Hurley sitting next to him at ESPN’s studio in New York. Adama Sanogo’s NBA future is less clear, but it is clear he needs to go pro, wherever that takes him. “Adama is done with college basketball,” Hurley said. Tristen Newton, also testing the waters but retaining his eligibility, is a wild card. Others leaving via the transfer portal have different roles in mind.
Jackson, 6 feet 6, is his own case. His one-of-a-kind athletic tool box, despite his lack of offensive polish, could hit pro scouts and coaches any number of ways, especially if he is invited to the draft combine May 16-18. The decision point is where Jackson, 21, is led to believe he will be drafted; first round, he goes. Second round, he returns.
“He’s got two great options,” Hurley said. “If he plays himself into the first round, that’s a big win. If he doesn’t, he’s coming back to a team that’s going to be in the hunt to have another huge season.”
It will probably take until Memorial Day before UConn knows what Jackson and Newton will do, what kind of role Hurley can offer potential transfers. That complicates things back in Storrs. It could cost Hurley on the recruiting/transfer trail; it may have already cost the Huskies Nicholas Timberlake, sharp-shooter at Towson who visited UConn last weekend, but chose to transfer to Kansas.
But Hurley, sitting on his championship, can afford to be patient and be unconditionally loyal to the players who delivered it. There will be players out there who will want to come to UConn and fill the roles he’ll have open in June, and they will come for the right reasons. Hurley can afford to look up at that banner and remind himself it was built on a foundation of trust between coach and player, and that trust must be the bedrock on which to try to build the next one.
“That’s what makes our program special,” Hurley said. “It’s the secret sauce to why we’ve been able to accomplish what we’ve been able to accomplish, and the way we’ve accomplished it, the way the fans kind of love our team and love our program. It’s because it’s got a certain vibe to it.”
