Never Stop by Dan Hurley & Ian O'Connor

Author:Dan Hurley & Ian O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2025-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

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In my meeting with Sanogo, Jackson, and Hawkins, I promised them that I’d bring in players who could help them right away, guys who could win in March and in April.

Alex, I thought, was an incredible start.

We also signed a local kid out of Bristol, Connecticut. A seven-foot-one center named Donovan Clingan.

He was a four-star recruit. Not a five-star. Four. Not a guy on the ESPN list of top fifteen high school centers in the nation. In fact Clingan was ranked sixteenth at his position, fifty-sixth overall in the rankings of top 100 prospects.

And yet the first time I saw him work out, I knew he was a Husky. Great fit. Didn’t have great athleticism, the speed and lateral quickness you love, but he had great sports athleticism.

And such soft hands. Every ball thrown to him, he caught it easily. There was something pleasing, almost magical, about the way that ball landed in his mitts, and the way he held it aloft, and manipulated it, and passed it. And threw it out of a trap in the post, with three or four players hanging on him.

He also moved easily for such a big guy. He could change directions like a sports car. That’s next-level dexterity. Despite his size, you could almost imagine him mastering shortstop. Or quarterback. He had that kind of grace, plus brainpower.

Sometimes I could visibly see it in his face, the rapid-fire thinking and processing.

None of us doubted that Donovan could pick up our system. Easy. But we discovered that he could also go off-script when necessary.

And it didn’t hurt that he was from Bristol. Homegrown. A kid we’d been hearing about and keeping an eye on since his early days. We want those guys to be the guts of our team, and then we want to augment them with strong pieces from the transfer portal. That’s the goal anyway.

We got help on that front from HD Intelligence, a basketball analytics company run by a couple of Harvard guys, Matt Dover and Colton Houston. These dudes go deep into advanced statistical analysis to help us figure out… basically, everything. From which opponents we should schedule, to which players we need to beat those opponents.

On scheduling, they use algorithms to determine the optimal nonconference opponents who will give you the best possible chance to make the NCAA Tournament.

HDI will break down our shot efficiency and that of our opponents. They give us data showing which is our best defensive lineup, and offensive lineup, and our best rebounding lineup.

We don’t take what they say as gospel. But we lean on them heavily and try always to achieve that mix of analysis and intuition. Gut and our feel are still a big part of the game.

We used HDI to build a team around the core three. We asked them specifically to break down Nahiem Alleyne of Virginia Tech, Joey Calcaterra of San Diego, Hassan Diarra of Texas A&M, and Tristen Newton of East Carolina. What they told us really helped.

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