Mar 23, 2025; Raleigh, NC, USA; Connecticut Huskies head coach Dan Hurley reacts after a play during the second half against the Florida Gators in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at Lenovo Center. Mandatory Credit: Zachary Taft-Imagn Images Zachary Taft Imagn Images
On Sunday in Raleigh, the University of Connecticut saw its dream of a three-peat dashed.
UConn had won the past two national men’s basketball titles, but this time fell just short to No. 1 seed Florida, 77-75, in a round of 32 game at the NCAA Tournament.
And then it got weird.
UConn’s volatile, brilliant head basketball coach Dan Hurley, who was on his way out of the arena, saw the team from Baylor about to enter through the same tunnel door. He shouted to the Baylor team and its coaches in what appeared to be an obvious reference to the officials: “I hope they don’t f—- you like they f—-ed us! I hope they don’t do that to you, Baylor.”
We know those were Hurley’s exact words because Joey Ellis, a sports reporter for “Charlotte Sports Live,” captured them on video. Ellis had been standing in the tunnel as UConn left the court, covering the event for CSL and Queen City News. He videotaped Hurley’s brief outburst and then put it on X (formerly Twitter), where it has been viewed millions of times on various platforms.
Was this the worst thing Hurley has ever said? No. Was it a crass, silly but somewhat understandable statement, given Hurley’s eighth-seeded UConn had come so close to pulling off a major upset? Sure. And most of us have been there. You lose a game. You say something you regret. Maybe someone calls you on it. You move on.
And there it would have ended, except for what happened next. According to a follow-up report by “Charlotte Sports Live”, the head PR person for UConn basketball approached Ellis on press row Sunday afternoon shortly after the video was posted.
The UConn official’s name is Bobby Mullen, and he is the director of men’s basketball communications at the school.
According to CSL, Mullen then confronted Ellis.
“Mullen asked for that video that had gone viral to be removed,” CSL’s on-air report said. “He then threatened Joey, saying he would ‘ruin his life’ if he didn’t. This was heard by multiple reporters and staff on hand.”
Charlotte Sports Live is part of Queen City News, which is the Fox affiliate in Charlotte. The station didn’t take the video down. It did ask Mullen for more of an explanation (I did, too, but Mullen didn’t respond to my emailed request for an interview).
Mullen said to the station management: “The lasting image of Coach Hurley leaving the court should have been him walking off the court arm-in-arm with his seniors, overwhelmed with emotion. Instead, a reporter — who was in an area he should not have been — recorded on his cell phone a private comment made to members of another coaching staff.”
When I contacted Charlotte Sports Live, the station said it stands by Ellis’s reporting. It otherwise didn’t comment.
It appears that Mullen’s assertion that Ellis wasn’t in a place he was supposed to be was incorrect or at least highly debatable, given that media commonly congregate in the tunnels of NCAA basketball events and often use those same tunnels to get from their own seats to the press rooms.
In any case, Mullen made the situation much worse with the tone of his conversation with Ellis.
Mullen soon would post a tweet — and then delete it — that according to a USA Today screenshot read: “PR man yells at reporter. News at 11. I have a journalism degree and I know the difference between reporting and seeking out ‘gotcha’ moments. My temper flared a bit in a moment of weakness after a loss, but I think the journalists I work with regularly would vouch for me.”
You know what another, much shorter way to have said all of that would have been?
Two words.
I’m sorry.
Hurley got overheated. Then his PR guy got overheated while defending him. It happens. And it’s going to happen sometimes to Hurley, whose demeanor with referees occasionally veers toward the Bobby Knight School of Civility. It was Hurley, remember, who was caught on camera in January screaming at a different referee: “Don’t turn your back on me! I’m the best coach in the f—- sport!”
Or, as Hurley put it in a more positive way after the loss to Florida: “We’re a passionate program. The players play with it. I coach with it.”
Mar 23, 2025; Raleigh, NC, USA; Connecticut Huskies head coach Dan Hurley reacts during the first half against the Florida Gators in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at Lenovo Center. Mandatory Credit: Zachary Taft-Imagn Images Zachary Taft Zachary Taft-Imagn Images
Sometimes passion bleeds into anger, and Hurley can’t always control his temper. He also seems to know he has a problem and needs to recalibrate his life a little. After the loss in Raleigh, in a press conference in which he also mildly complained about the officiating, Hurley said: “There’s a lot of rewiring and things I’ve got to do in the off-season, because you just get caught up in this tidal wave of success that we’ve had. You lose perspective. You struggle with the ego at times because you’ve been on this incredible run.
“It will be nice to get to a normal off-season and just get back to myself as a coach and not have to throw out first pitches,” Hurley continued. “You should only be ringing stock market bells and throwing out first pitches when you win the major championship. I won’t have to do things like that. I’ll be able to just focus on the upcoming season and make better decisions with all aspects of coaching.”
All true. I hope Hurley gets some help and gets himself under control, because he’s a great coach who has overcome a lot (not the least of which was being Bobby Hurley’s younger brother). He recently turned down the head job with the L.A. Lakers to stick around in the tumultuous world of college basketball. When he’s not raging at striped shirts, he has a lot of terrific ideas to improve the sport.
But don’t blame the weatherman for the rain. Ellis was simply doing his job, which was to report what was going on at Raleigh’s Lenovo Center on that day. This is a freedom of the press issue. The press owes the public the truth, not a sanitized version of what happened that is going to make those in power look better.
CSL was right not to take down that video. And Mullen, the UConn PR man, owes the Charlotte TV reporter an apology.
