Theres a really good article on cnnsi.com about the St. Benedictine Coach (the highschool where Cubillan and Burke played). Apparently Crean offered him an assistants job and he turned it down to stay with his kids HS. I've put the stuff on him in the post but the article also has stuff about his dad thats pretty intersting. I'll attach the link. By the way, one of the little kids in the picture on the first page of the article is wearing a Marquette Basketball shirt.
Building a power Three weeks earlier, back across the Skyway Bridge, Danny Hurley was enjoying both his kingdom and his power on Election Day. Admittedly neither a saint nor a scholar in his younger years, Hurley is now involved in nearly every aspect of his players' lives, constantly walking through the school's halls and hearing everything about his players.
"It's the biggest difference between what I do and what my father's role at St. Anthony's has been," Hurley says. "There are situations at St. Anthony that can be eased without my father knowing, but if one of my players sneezes here, then I usually know."
St. Benedict's, which has students from grades 7-12, has an enrollment of 750 and tuition of $7,000 a year. Students from as close as a few city blocks and as far as Mongolia attend, either living at home or in on-campus dormitories.
"I have assiduously avoided hiring coaches here that are not faculty," Father Leahy says. "It's just not benefiting the kids to have a coach who is not around during the day. All of our kids benefit from Danny being here. Not just basketball players."
"We're not a basketball academy. Our players are with the general students. They don't stay with sponsor families," says Hurley. "My guys live unglorious lives here."
It was an ignominious life that Danny Hurley left to coach at St. Benedict's. Mired in the maelstrom of the Kevin Bannon naked free throw scandal at Rutgers in 1999, Danny, an assistant coach at the time, considered the possibility of going to St. Bonaventure as an assistant. Shortly thereafter, Brian Doherty, a family friend and high-ranking political figure in the Garden State, asked Danny during that year's Final Four if he would like to establish the nation's premier high school basketball program.
"I want to watch my kids grow up, and I was frustrated with how limited [my contact was] with the development of kids," Danny says. "I wanted out of the college assistant coaching life."
Five months later, Doherty died of a heart attack, and Danny established a basketball classic in which St. Anthony and St. Benedict's play. "By the time I'm done with practice during the year, between the travel and the everyday duties, I'm working Wall Street hours," says Danny, who leaves his Freehold, N.J., house by 6 a.m. each day. "We weren't able to walk in here and get respect because I'm older, have white hairs. I'm overweight, and if I tell the kids that I played in the Big East, they'd say, 'Yeah, okay, you played in that conference? Sure.'"
Culture of successOn Danny's office wall is a framed article from The Star Ledger that was written during his first year at St. Benedict's. The article re-introduced him to the paper's audience, but it is a quote from Danny about adjusting to the high school level of refereeing that he points to as an "educational experience."
"There are things that I said that I should not have," he says. "But you get through that and you become more mature."
Entering his sixth year as a high school coach, Danny, who played his college ball 15 minutes away at Seton Hall, has sent 12 players to Division 1 schools and one player, J.R. Smith, was drafted by the Hornets with the 18th pick in 2004. Now in his second year with the Denver Nuggets, Smith pays tuition for three current team members, including his brother, Chris.
"It's not a program that he has in order there. It's a culture," says Marquette coach Tom Crean, who recruited David Cubillan and Dwight Burke from St. Benedict's. "Dan Hurley could coach at any level. A year ago July, when I had an opening on the staff, I talked with Danny, but there's a relationship with his kids that's about more than coaching."
Danny stays in frequent contact with former players, leaving messages on Smith's cell phone to critique his play and driving to Seton Hall to check on his point guard from last year's team, Eugene Harvey.
"His main message is that the ball's going to stop rolling one of these days," says Tamir Jackson, a 6-2, 170-pound sophomore guard with a 3.7 GPA, who will keep the Newark postal workers busy until the day he signs his letter of intent.
"This here is Corey [Stokes'] letter of intent for Villanova," says Danny, holding up a UPS envelope from a pile of 50 recruiting inquiries on his desk. "His father will come in tomorrow. No big press conference or anything like that."
"The motto in the hallways here is, 'What hurts my brother, hurts me,'" says Stokes, a 6-5, 210-pound shooting guard. "Coach really instills that in us with the group mentality. If someone gets in trouble, we all face the punishment. There's more responsibility that way."
The talent pool does not dry up after Stokes. Zach Rosen, a red-headed lefty from the Colonia section of Newark, maintains a 4.0 GPA and has made an oral commitment to Stanford. Junior forward Samardo Samuels, a native of Jamaica, and sophomore forward Greg Echenique, originally from Venezuela, are next on the most sought after list that is Danny's roster.
"There's a readiness to play at the college level that was always seen from Bob's teams and Eugene has certainly come to us in that same mold with the toughness and discipline to contribute immediately," says Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez, who coached against Bob Sr. when he was at since-closed St. Nicholas of Tolentine High (Bronx, N.Y.).
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/the_bonus/12/13/hurleys/index.html
