UConn finally wins at Seton Hall, exorcises another demon from last season
NEWARK, NJ — For Dan Hurley’s Connecticut Huskies, the 2025-2026 season has been about exorcising demons from a season ago.
It doesn’t matter how these exorcisms happen.
Tuesday evening, the toughest purge to date.
Last year’s Huskies fell short of that unobtainable three-peat in 2025, but their quest for a third national title in four seasons is off to a good start thanks to their latest win, this one a convincing 69-64 win over Seton Hall on Tuesday. With the win, the Huskies are 17-1 overall and 7-0 to start league play for the first time since 1998-99 – the season of UConn’s first NCAA championship.
Now he’s chasing a seventh.
The path through the Big East looks significantly easier this season than last. Yet one of the team’s toughest tests came against the Pirates. No. 3 UConn was up 18 points in the second half and seemingly en route to a cruise-control road victory over 25th-ranked Seton Hall. Instead, the Huskies succumbed to the Pirates’ full-court pressure in the final 10 minutes and ended up narrowly escaping, winning despite 17 turnovers.
“These guys stick with you,” Hurley said. “They are very fast.”
UConn’s victory was ultimately aided by the fact that Seton Hall, which ranks near the bottom in 3-point accuracy among all Power Five teams (31.4%), was a season-worst 1-for-16 from beyond the arc. Connecticut was barely better, going just 3 of 17 from deep. Seton Hall’s only 3-pointer came in the final minute, when Pirates junior guard Mike Williams III hit a triple to cut the lead to two with 48 seconds left. It’s at the right time, but too little, too late.
Kansas upsets No. 2 Iowa State: Jayhawks hand Cyclones first loss just days after Bill Self says ‘we suck’
Kyle Boone
The Huskies’ victory marked the first time in 58 months – since March 3, 2021 – that Connecticut beat SHU on the road. And he did it as an escape in the last minute. UConn point guard Silas Demary Jr. made two foul shots with less than 30 seconds remaining to give the Huskies a 67-64 lead. The Rock was knocking.
Then Williams III tried 3 more, but he was blocked by Husky freshman guard Braylon Mullins. A stampede ensues. Who ended up with the ball underneath?
Demary.
He hit two more freebies to give the game its final score. A UConn team beating its opponents by an average of 16.6 points had to settle for a five-point advantage, nearly losing an 18-point lead along the way. This kind of twist can send Hurley into a matchup against many teams on many nights. But not this one.
That’s because the Pirates are a viable potential NCAA Tournament team, at least from Hurley’s perspective.
“This is a team that’s going to compete at the top of the league,” Hurley said. “I wouldn’t want to see Seton Hall’s name drawn next to mine in the NCAA Tournament this year, I can tell you that.”
The Hall’s rise to power was one of the surprises of the season. SHU was picked last in the Big East in the preseason, but no team at the Power Five level has moved up as much in KenPom ratings from October to present as the Pirates (50 spots: from 93rd on Opening Day to 43rd after Tuesday’s loss).
Sweet revenge and victory to decide in the championship
Tuesday night was about survival, Hurley said, and of course ending the streak on the road against his alma mater. UConn had lost its last four trips to the Prudential Center – yes, including both NCAA title seasons under Hurley earlier this decade – and so this victory is surely a balm on its soul.
Although he swears it wasn’t something that weighed on him until last weekend.
“You obviously don’t think about it in the preseason. You don’t think about it in the summer. You don’t think about it in October,” Hurley later told CBS Sports in the UConn locker room. “But when you get to two days out and the media reminds you that you lost four in a row here, and that chip implants itself somewhere in the brain, you try not to think about it.”
Says who? With the comfort of going home with a victory, UConn senior forward Alex Karaban readily admitted he was thinking about it.
“A lot of anger just walking into that arena,” he said. That anger was channeled appropriately in the first half, when UConn went into the break with a 35-22 lead. Karaban finished with 13 points and avoided an O-fer at Seton Hall for his lauded college career.
“It was never a question of ‘here we go again,’” he said. “It was staying together. It was similar to BYU in a way.”
Connecticut win against BYU in November It was another match that was won thanks to Demary’s composure at the end of the match.. Overall this night, the most valuable player on the court was Tarris Reed Jr., who had 21 points and nine rebounds.
“It’s real against these guys,” Hurley said of Reed’s performance against Shaheen Holloway’s team. “I have so much respect for how hard his teams play. His team might be the toughest team in the country.”
The Huskies can win in multiple ways
In a difficult year for the Big East (where questions remain about whether the league can qualify for even four NCAA bids), Tuesday was an opportunity for Seton Hall to boost its national profile. It was the school’s first ranked home game since Jan. 1, 2022. The comeback was impressive — UConn managed just one field goal attempt in the final five minutes, a feat that almost certainly won’t be repeated the rest of the season — but the Huskies made just enough plays to get there.
A Seton Hall victory would have been better for the Big East. UConn is a level above itself in the conference, however. It’s a winner in so many ways, including dramatically recently. Last Wednesday, UConn overcame a 13-point deficit with less than nine minutes remaining to escape with an overtime victory over Providence. There were also blowout losses to Illinois, Kansas and Florida.
The defense is closing in on efficiency numbers that are within earshot of Hurley’s two championship teams.
“We showed some special qualities,” Hurley told CBS Sports. “With our injuries and the schedule, we’ve won well, but we haven’t played as well (lately). Especially on the offensive end and on the backboard, in terms of turnovers and some rebounding issues that I think can be fixed with this team.”
Hurley said if turnovers and rebounds were taken care of, UConn would be as strong as any team in the country with as good a chance at winning the title as anyone. And he’s right. The Huskies are 5-0 on the road. That’s a better record than anyone else in major league basketball, and second only to Miami-Ohio’s 8-0 mark. (The RedHawks are a college hoops best 18-0 after their 100-61 win over Central Michigan on Tuesday.)
The Huskies have won 13 straight since losing short-handed at home to No. 1 Arizona in November. It looks like this team’s worst-case scenario in the Big East will be an 18-2 run in the regular season. Villanova and St. John’s are playing well, but beyond that, it will be difficult to find challengers.
When UConn lost in overtime at Seton Hall a year ago — to an SHU team that would finish with just seven wins — Hurley called the comeback that night a “coffin on wheels.”
I asked him Tuesday evening: How long is the trip back to campus this year?
“Grateful,” he said.
UConn has five Quad 1 wins, tied for second with six other teams. But these teams (Arizona, Nebraska, Vanderbilt, Iowa State, BYU) have a lot more opportunity in Q1 because their leagues are much better and deeper than the Big East.
“There’s not a lot of chances for us in the league this year to get Quad 1 type games, to get Quad 1 wins, to beat the teams that are going to be in the field,” Hurley said. “I mean, this is a team (Seton Hall) that’s going to be on the field, they’re a great team. It was actually fun to play a game that we could take advantage of. I think the group was probably a little looser, because it was a game that we could win, as opposed to a game that you lose, that becomes a success.”
Seton Hall’s improvement is huge for the Big East but also beneficial for UConn at this location. The Huskies are the league’s only national title contenders. The start of 2026 has been a bit rocky, but all signs point to a return to supremacy when it matters most. The next two months will be about asserting their dominance, taking back the Big East and positioning themselves for another run through April.
By then, Hurley will surely summon a few more demons to hunt.
