STORRS, Conn. — Known for his signature white headband, UConn men’s basketball freshman Liam McNeeley is easily recognizable on the court.
The 6’7 forward from Richardson, Texas began wearing the headband the summer before his freshman year of high school. During a stretch of poor shooting, his mom said his hair was getting in his eyes and causing him to miss.
“So, I wouldn’t wear it and kept being in a shooting slump. I finally put the headband on and had like 30 [points] in a summer game. Now, I’m never going to take it off... Mother knows best,” McNeeley said with a grin during a media session on campus last week.
Make no mistake about it though, there’s much more to McNeeley’s game than his look. The 2024 McDonald’s All-American and consensus five-star, top 15 recruit can shoot. He was arguably the nation’s best high school shooter last season.
McNeeley can pass at an elite level too, his athleticism speaks on tape, and he has the size and length to be a plus defender. Yet, when UConn head coach Dan Hurley spoke on Aug. 9 after summer practice wrapped up, it wasn’t McNeeley’s skills that jumped out. It’s the 18-year-old’s mindset that left the back-to-back national champion play caller most impressed.
“He’s wired differently,” Hurley said.
The UConn coaching staff believes McNeeley is a player who can step into a primary role and make an immediate difference, and his maturity was on full display this summer. Hurley described the freshman as a very serious individual who chose UConn for very serious reasons.
“He displays that, and the team needs that,” Hurley said. “The team needs a player with those attributes and the fire and a little bit of nasty competitiveness. He’s got an edge to him. You need that balance on this team.”
Hurley credited McNeeley’s family and background for transforming him into the player he has already become. McNeeley sits in rare company. He is a fourth-generation Division I college basketball player.
“Basketball is everything in my family. Everybody played at some point,” McNeeley said. “My great-grandfather played at Tulsa. My grandfather played at TCU, and then my mom played at Rice. My uncle played at SMU and Baylor. My other uncle played at SMU. So, me being the fourth generation is pretty special. It’s kind of like a legacy.”
And McNeeley has joined a team that is on top of the world. UConn has won back-to-back national championships, becoming the first Division I men’s college basketball squad to do so in nearly two decades. Now, at the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, pursuing a three-peat is more than a mission; it’s a lifestyle.
Despite the momentum, the roster will look significantly different come November. Four of UConn’s five starters on the 2024 national championship team were drafted into the NBA. The Huskies lost First-Team All-American and Husky of Honor Tristen Newton, the gritty and prolific shooting Cam Spencer, and NBA lottery picks Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan.
To replace what was lost, and build around returning starting forward Alex Karaban, Hurley recruited top 40 freshman guard Ahmad Nowell and top 75 freshman forward Isaiah Abraham. In the transfer portal, he also signed Michigan center Tarris Reed Jr., a former top 35 recruit, and St. Mary’s guard Aidan Mahaney, who was a First-Team West Coast Conference selection the past two seasons.
Hurley showed his most reach when he landed McNeeley, the former Indiana commit who changed course and ultimately chose UConn, signing with the Huskies in late April.
Having added McNeeley at a time when recruiting players from the 2024 high school class seemed all but over, Hurley explained why he brought on a late addition.
“I think he’s just what we needed based on what we lost,” Hurley said. “I think our plan was to get an impact player, whether that was in the portal or as an available high school player. For us, he was, maybe, the only available high school player we would have recruited because we knew we needed an impact player with everything we lost.”
McNeeley described his de-commitment from Indiana as a whirlwind. So many schools reached out so quickly that he had to shut his phone off for several days. UConn was among the first programs to contact him. McNeeley explained why he made his decision to come to Connecticut.
“They were back-to-back national champions, and all their guys were doing great. They entered the draft,” he said. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to play for the back-to-back national champions?”
If anything, Hurley expressed regret that he didn’t pursue McNeeley from the beginning of the recruiting process. He said he watched McNeeley play often at Montverde Academy, a national powerhouse in Florida, presumably as he recruited Cooper Flagg, the generational prospect and high school teammate of McNeeley's who flirted with the Huskies but eventually committed to Duke.
“We were just being stupid… We should have just recruited [McNeeley] straight away,” Hurley said. “We thought because he was from Texas that it would be hard to get him to come to UConn, but then I guess because we went back-to-back, we said to ourselves, ‘We’ve proven ourselves as having currently the best college basketball program in the country. We should be able to recruit anyone from anywhere.’ Then, he ended up visiting and committing, so [I’m a] dummy.”
While McNeeley acknowledged that it “probably wasn’t the best fit” during his first recruitment, he’s more than happy to have ended up in Storrs.
“I mean, definitely no hard feelings. I love it here,” McNeeley said.
As Hurley described McNeeley’s game, and what he’s observed during summer practices, he said there is more to the freshman than his pure ability to score the ball and open up the floor as a three-point shooter.
“That competitive personality; he’s got a lot of confidence, so that swagger is important, but I also think he can really pass too, and I think that people will see that,” Hurley said.
Hurley commended McNeeley for being able to be coached hard. Not everyone can.
When asked if he enjoys the grueling practice style Hurley is known for, McNeeley didn’t blink.
“Being pushed. That’s really why I came here. To come to a place where I’m going to get pushed to the max and then some to continue to get better and help a great program,” McNeeley said. “This is like my favorite thing in the world. Just getting to go through hard practices. I’m really looking forward to getting to actually practice for two or three hours every day and just grind it out with the guys.”
And for what it's worth, McNeeley can return the fire. His intense demeanor has already drawn comparisons to Spencer's. Hurley said that McNeeley will be a player that opposing fans love to hate. McNeeley is all for it.
“I get pretty fired up. I yell a lot and I get into it, but it’s not something I try to do. I think it just comes natural. Like when I start [to] get going, I just see red, and it just comes out," McNeeley said.
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Dalton Zbierski is a digital content producer and writer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dzbierski@FOX61.com.
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