UConn coach Dan Hurley was emotional after his team’s NCAA tournament win streak was snapped at 13 by Florida on Sunday.
The coach of the two-time national champions had to fight back tears in his postgame interview with CBS. He said that his team showed honor in the way that it played against one of the pre-tournament favorites. UConn entered the 2025 NCAA tournament as a No. 8 seed and Florida was a No. 1 seed.
“[Florida] showed their quality, I thought we played with tremendous honor, I thought we played with the heart of a championship program and a program that’s gone back-to-back and for a team to end – what we really wanted to do, they were going to have to put us down,” Hurley told CBS. “And obviously a worthy opponent like that, there’s honor in the way we went out.”
The Huskies scrapped through a rough shooting first half and led by as many as six points in the second half. But Florida took its first lead of the game with less than three minutes to go on a 3-pointer by Walter Clayton Jr. and UConn never led again as the Huskies lost 77-75.
UConn opened as the No. 3 team in the AP Top 25 but never showed itself as a real title contender throughout a tumultuous season where Hurley made multiple headlines for the way he acted on the sidelines. The Huskies lost all three games they played in the Maui Invitational and finished third in the Big East.
Their 24-10 record is why they were seeded as a No. 8 and beat No. 9 Oklahoma in the first round to draw Florida in the second round. The Gators’ win means UConn’s streak — which dates back to the start of the 2023 NCAA tournament — ends tied with Duke from 1991 through 1993 as the longest win streak in modern men’s college basketball history.
“I just love ‘em. Just love ‘em,” Hurley said of his team. “This year’s been a real battle. We’ve battled and we’ve had to battle and battle and battle. At times I don’t think we liked each other a whole lot with some of the things we had to go through together but I don’t think I’ll ever love a team more than how hard they fought for what we were trying to accomplish and for the honor they played with today.”
