The NCAA received another major shakeup via the courts when a federal judge in Colorado granted a preliminary injunction and blanket waiver for athletes in the 2022 high school class to compete at the collegiate level for a fifth year.
However, as much as he may stand to benefit from the ruling, UConn Huskies men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley is calling the current landscape “unsustainable” as he feels that fifth-years returning this soon before the season affects the upcoming high schoolers and creates an unfair advantage.
“You can’t act like it’s not a victimless situation. I mean, there are kids that are 17, 18 years old that potentially may lose out on opportunities,” the two-time national champion coach told reporters Friday, via ESPN.
“So it’s not victimless. At some point, you’ve got to care about the sport, especially if the sport has given you a lot. If you’re a coach and the sport has given you a lot, it’s like doing things to hurt the sport so that you can win a little bit more. I think you’ve got to be able to look in the mirror on that, especially if the sport has given you a lot already.”
Texas Tech has already announced that it will bring back Darrion Williams after he went unselected in the NBA draft, and a potential return of Denzel Aberdeen to Florida could be a massive boon for the Gators’ title hopes.
“Now you can screw up high school recruiting. You could screw up portal recruiting, not have a very good team, and now start plucking from a group of players in August and put together a team. It makes it tough,” Hurley said. “We did the best we could do in high school recruiting. Now you’ve got this selection of portal players. You put together the best team you can. You start practicing for the summer, and now let’s unleash 80 players into the sport in the first week of August. I mean, we can’t go on like this.”
Hurley is now preparing for a season he is hoping ends with the Huskies’ third national title in five seasons, and he couldn’t fathom inserting a new player and disrupting the current chemistry of his unit.
“We have meetings with compliance, and if compliance says that something is illegal and we can’t do it, or a player is ineligible based on the rules, our reaction as a university is not, ‘Let’s go find a lawyer in Willimantic, Connecticut, or something,'” he said.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.