STORRS, Conn. — The accolades keep coming in for the UConn Men’s Basketball team, as head coach Dan Hurley and guard Tristen Newton have been nominated for major Naismith awards.
The Atlanta Tipoff Club announced on Friday that Hurley is a semifinalist for the 2024 Werner Ladder Naismith Men’s College Coach of the Year, and Newton is a semifinalist for the 2024 Jersey Mike’s Naismith Men’s College Player of the Year.
In his sixth season leading the Huskies, Hurley steered UConn to 28 regular season wins, the most in program history, en route to winning Big East Coach of the Year. UConn’s 18 league wins were the most in a single season in Big East history, and the team tied conference records with a 14-game in-season league winning streak and a +13.9 scoring margin in league play.
UConn won the Big East by four games, earning its first outright regular season conference title since 1999.
Earlier this week, Sporting News named Hurley its National Coach of the Year. Coming off the program’s fifth national championship, it was unclear last November if the Huskies would contend this season after losing three starters and five rotation players off the 2022-2023 squad, but Hurley leads a team that has been more dominant than last year’s.
Perhaps, the Huskies’ greatest on-court contributor in 2023-2024 has been Newton, a fifth-year player who transferred in from East Carolina for the start of last season. After an inconsistent first campaign in Storrs, Newton improved his game all around this season, leading the Huskies with 14.9 points per game, 7.1 rebounds per game and 5.8 assists per game.
For his efforts, Newton has been named a First Team All-American by Sporting News, Field of 68 and 247 Sports. He was also unanimously selected to the All-Big East First Team, and the Associated Press named him Big East Conference Player of the Year.
This season, Newton recorded triple-doubles against Manhattan and Villanova and is currently the active NCAA leader with four career triple-doubles. He is also the only active player in the country with career totals of more than 1,800 points, 700 rebounds and 700 assists.
Friday at 5:30 p.m. on FOX, UConn squares off against a hungry St. John’s squad led by Hall of Fame head coach Rick Pitino in the semifinals of the Big East Tournament. The winner will play either Providence or Marquette in the Big East Tournament championship game Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
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Dalton Zbierski is a digital content producer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dzbierski@FOX61.com.
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