The Blueprint for Success: Unpacking UConn’s ‘Most Complex’ and Efficient Offense in College Basketball
GLENDALE, Arizona — Dan Hurley, the coach of Connecticut, made the decision to use a new offensive scheme and method of teaching set plays in the summer of 2022. Hurley decided to take a football-oriented approach. He created a vocabulary of terminology for various acts and alignments.
The fictitious example he uses is “14 jet zoom pitch twin.”
The Huskies stack actions on top of each other after the alignment, which is a one-four low, is represented by the number 14. Here, it is a jet, followed by a zoom, a pitch, and a twin.
“It’s like learning a language,” Hurley says.
With a focus on off-ball screening and mobility, the new approach helped the Huskies win a national championship in 2023. Hurley then basically destroyed the UConn dictionary last summer and created a new glossary of concepts.
“We do that because of paranoia,” says assistant coach Luke Murray, who acts as the program’s offensive coordinator.
It is probably not needed because opponents are already dazed by UConn’s well-choreographed sets. It is like having to multitask in a classroom full of yelling kids when you are defending UConn. An instance from the semifinal matchup with Alabama on Saturday:
The play begins with Cam Spencer, the top shooter for UConn, catching the ball and passing it to the wing. Donovan Clingan then sets up a chin screen for Spencer, who then drives to the hoop. After that, he turns around and positions Alex Karaban’s back screen. This is where Alabama’s defense starts to become confused. Rylan Griffen and Aaron Estrada of Alabama nearly trade places.
sticking in the middle of the lane, sagging off Clingan and trying to pass for an air traffic controller, Grant Nelson is sticking up for Clingan. He is looking over his shoulder to observe what is going on behind him. Spencer swings to his right and sets the first of two stagger screens intended for Tristen Newton while the two guards from Alabama are perplexed at the switch. Newton cuts to the basket after rejecting the screen. Griffen truly has a chance to reposition himself as a result of this, but Clingan immediately screens again. Griffen is toast as well. Spencer twirls to receive a line jumper for a free shot. Nelson should have helped, but he was afraid to completely commit because he was trapped in his control center in the paint.
It requires three or four viewings to fully understand the situation. Imagine attempting to justify all of that in the present moment.
“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.
Nicolas Batum, the winger for the Philadelphia 76ers, tweeted last week that although he has not watched college basketball, “the way UConn is playing is the way basketball should be taught and played.” Particularly at that age.
Dan’s father, Bob Hurley Sr., a legendary coach, said he is been hearing from his coaching friends back east how much fun this team is to watch.
Dan Hurley has a lengthy history of leading hard-working teams. An offensive genius, though? His defenses were usually superior to his attackers. Hurley did not had a top-50 offense until his eleventh season as a collegiate head coach. And Hurley had never led a top-20 offense before, prior to the Huskies’ third-place performance last season. As the most effective offense in college basketball, the Huskies this year take on Purdue in the national championship game on Monday night. He seems to be poised to establish a dynasty.
How did this happen?
The Huskies played in the American Athletic Conference in 2018 when Hurley took charge. Wichita State and Houston were the two top teams in the league. Hurley attempted to emulate the large, physical frontlines of those squads. Hurley had played a lot of four-and-around-one with a lot of ball-screen offense at Rhode Island. He brought the ball-screen ideas to UConn, where he now had two floor posts. One issue was the spacing.
Hurley brought on Murray to assist him with the offense in an attempt to adopt a more contemporary strategy that would use four perimeter players. Hurley and Murray had worked together at Wagner during Murray’s first season as a collegiate head coach in 2010–11. During that season, Hurley attempted to exploit a lack of talent by maximizing the shot clock. Studying all of his teams, you will likely find that the first Wagner team is most similar to his final two UConn teams. Hurley ran a lot of careless action to free shooters, and that roster’s shooting was its strongest point. Wagner’s assist rate for the season ranked him eighteenth. Hurley’s squad would not place in the top 100 in terms of assist rate until the team that concluded last year.
Hurley and Murray reconnected in April 2021, but Hurley’s loyalty to senior player Isaiah Whaley prevented them from implementing the plan straight immediately. Additionally, UConn favored the pick-and-roll and stuck with a typical two-big lineup since point guard RJ Cole was most effective when working out of ball screens.
But the strategy was implemented in the summer of 2022. Jordan Hawkins was an outstanding marksman for the Huskies who could run off screens and use his gravity to open others. Additionally, they possessed the perfect stretch four in Karaban, a freshman who arrived for the 2021–22 season during the semester break after graduating early.
“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 saw teams in Europe and took note of various ideas and packages that they may apply.
“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.”
The idea is to overwhelm the defense by piling several actions to make them unsure of what to do. Choreographed plays are the most common. The Huskies’ offense is like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, despite the fact that they occasionally appeared patterned.
“If you make a decision to reject the screen, now that sets off a chain of events with two or three other off-ball scenarios,” Murray explains. “That’s something that we really work on hard, because good defensive teams a lot of times can do a good job at taking teams out of set plays. But I think the randomness of the way that we cut, the randomness of the way that we screen and the versatility of our guys as passers and movers and screeners and shooters really makes it hard.”
Although Murray believes the Huskies’ defense, which is ranked fourth nationally, is their greatest asset, he also thinks that offense and defense make up 65–45 percent of practice time.
“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.”
Many teams switch often because the Huskies set a lot of off-ball screens. That switch caused some problems for UConn early in the season. UConn’s defeat against Kansas was partly caused by injury, but KU’s switching defense also hindered the Huskies in their opening loss of the year.
They practiced a lot in the beginning, practicing how to counter these shifts. They began incorporating more cutting into their sets when Clingan got hurt, particularly when they would go to a five-out offensive scheme with Karaban at center.
“They got really good against anybody that switches with their slipping and their false actions,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott says. “If you shoot under a screen, or make a mistake on a late switch, they’ll break out of it and try to make you pay.”
Clingan pulls the rim protector away when he has the ball up top or in the corner, making it very difficult to stop. Because of his height, Clingan can easily see over the defense and is skilled at reading defenses. This is the fatal moment for back cuts.
The defenders is alarmed by the ceaseless cutting.
“If you cut and you don’t get the ball, you open it up for someone else,” Karaban says.
With their drive, the Huskies can punish switches as well. A huge guy understands it is time to attack when he changes onto Newton, as it does in the play below.
Clingan can also perform dribble handoffs, and due of his size, it is difficult to defend against him during such manoeuvres. The Huskies will send Clingan’s man to the post and attempt to feed him the ball there if he chooses to switch.
Hawkins running around numerous screens and then a late duck-in for Adama Sanogo constituted a large portion of last year’s offense. This year, the strategy was mostly to repeat last year’s success, with the exception of increasing Clingan’s and backup center Samson Johnson’s pick-and-roll usage. It became imperative to find Hawkins’s replacement. Spencer, who shot 43.4 percent from three point range at Rutgers the previous season, was acquired by the Huskies, but they soon realized he was more than just a knockdown shooter.
It was like trying to figure out calculus defending the team from the previous year. It feels like a trigonometry problem this season. In a pick-and-roll, Spencer is adept at handling the ball, and when he moves without it, he is fantastic. In terms of offensive rating, he leads all college basketball players. Karaban is an excellent cutter and can also fly off screens. Furthermore, their origins are not necessarily the same.
“They can run the same action and flip-flop players, which I don’t think is as common as everybody would think,” Miller says.
“What this coaching staff does better than anybody is just put you in position to be successful,” Spencer says. “They’re gonna help you play to your strengths and help you grow your weaknesses. There are times to go off script, and Coach Hurley will let you know when those times are, but you don’t have to with this team, honestly. We’re so unselfish, and the ball will find you. And if it doesn’t, then too bad; it’s not your night.”
It is this kind of thinking that accounts for UConn’s excellent shot selection. The fact that numerous halfcourt possessions can extend well into the shot clock is another reason the Huskies are ranked 328th in adjusted tempo.
“When they’re in the halfcourt, they’re very patient and they execute,” Miller says. “But when you talk about what makes them great, I think it’s the combination of how elite they are in transition and running their sets. I don’t think there’s anybody in college basketball that’s more dangerous in the open court.”
Hurley also aspired to become an exceptional in this field. He prefers his players to move the ball rapidly up the floor and look for transition threes rather than waiting for a play call from the sideline. This allows him to make quick plays after missed baskets. According to Synergy, the Huskies are fifth in halfcourt efficiency and seventh in college basketball’s most effective transition squad. Being in the top 10 in both categories makes them the only team in the nation.
UConn ranks 13th in offensive rebounding rate, and those statistics only account for first-chance opportunities—they do not account for second- or third-chance opportunities.
“Your work starts when they shoot the shot,” McDermott says, “because they’re coming on the offensive glass.”
It is tiresome to deal with because there is never a chance to unwind when facing the Huskies. They have won double digits in 11 straight games in the NCAA Tournament because of this. After Alabama hung around for thirty-five minutes on Saturday, Spencer made a free-throw line jumper, followed by a complex 20-second set that set up a Karaban 3-pointer, a pick-and-roll dunk for Clingan, and another exquisite play design that eliminated the need for assistance. Spencer then curled around a Clingan screen, engaged his defender, and passed the ball to him for a dunk.
The Huskies scored on seven of their last nine possessions, shattering the (Crimson) Tide.
For the remainder of college basketball, Miller states out loud that every game looks certain.
“(Hurley) has grown and evolved,” Miller says. “He’s become more sophisticated, and certainly more sure of himself.”
He is on the verge of winning back-to-back titles because to his improved offensive strategy. Who knows how many more there are?
(Top photo of Cam Spencer: Elsa / Getty Images)