UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley admits that his “ego had gotten — was getting — the better” of him following a conversation with legendary women’s basketball head coach Geno Auriemma last season, he writes in a forthcoming book.

In Hurley’s “Never Stop: Life, Leadership, and What It Takes To Be Great,” he writes that after UConn’s 0-3 trip to the Maui Invitational last November in which Hurley was assessed an ill-timed technical foul in overtime against Memphis and railed against the officiating all week, he needed to take stock of his attitude and behavior — especially after his wife, Andrea, told him he crossed a line.

Hurley reached out to Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, ESPN’s Seth Greenberg and lastly, Auriemma.

“He didn’t say anything the others hadn’t. But he delivered the message in a certain way. With force. With gravitas.

He made me really see. My ego had gotten-was getting-the better of me.

I admitted he was right. I told him that I was spiraling. I told him that I was convinced we were going to finish below .500.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘if the only gratification and the only part of coaching that excites you is winning the national championship, then you’ve lost your way, buddy! Where’s the joy in the things that you’ve always been about as a coach before you went on the championship run, like relationships with your players, like helping people get better. Like making your team the best it can be.

‘Be a coach, man. This is when you really need to be a leader. This team isn’t as good as last year’s, so what the hell are you going to do about it? Are you going home? Are you going to let this thing unravel?'”

Hurley writes in “Never Stop: Life, Leadership, and What It Takes To Be Great”

In a recent interview with ESPN, Hurley said his conversations with Auriemma helped him correct the ship on a personal level.

“The book lays out both aspects of things. I’ve handled failure in my life pretty well, I’ve battled, I’ve kept going, I’ve kept trying to work on myself, kept trying to improve, my career, my personal life. But then there’s also times where you don’t handle success as well as you’d like,” Hurley told ESPN.

In the book, he describes the jolt of that stretch: After winning back-to-back titles and even fielding an offer from the Los Angeles Lakers, it felt like an 18-20 month run where everything broke his way. Then came Maui — three straight losses — and the glow vanished.

“I unraveled some out there, emotionally and with leading the team. But that moment with Geno, that was a good moment for me, it was like a three-week Band-Aid. It cured where my mind was at. Once you realize you don’t have a national championship team, that hits you, that Band-Aid of conversations that I had with him, it stabilized me,” Hurley said in the interview.

Hurley also writes in the book that he considered resigning as UConn’s head coach and taking a year off, a development first reported earlier this month by The Athletic.

Days after the Huskies’ season-ending NCAA tournament loss to Florida — after which there was another viral moment of Hurley complaining about the officiating — Hurley says he was worn down by the last few years and the general state of college basketball.

He expanded on those thoughts to ESPN — and also explained why he ultimately decided to stay.

“I think some of it was being a bad loser. I was clearly a bad loser at the end of that game,” Hurley said. “We were playing the longest possible seasons, having extremely busy offseasons. There are different responsibilities you have as the top program in the sport, responsibility to do everything, promote college basketball, add that up with all the changes with NIL and the portal and what your team looks like the day after your season’s over. You don’t feel like pretty much anybody is on your team. Even if they’re not in the portal, every kid has an agent, and that agent is shopping you around. All those things, the offseasons that were short and packed and the long seasons and incredible dominant success in that tournament, being fatigued, being a sore loser, those things for a couple days put me in that spot.

“But in the end, Jaylin Stewart and Solo Ball were like — within a day or two, those guys coming in and saying, ‘We’re staying, we’re not even trying to negotiate, whatever you want to give me, I’m here.’ That’s what kind of snapped me out of it. Along with thinking, I’m never going to be the coach at UConn again and being the coach at UConn changed my life.”

“Never Stop: Life, Leadership, and What It Takes To Be Great,” which Hurley wrote with Ian O’Connor, comes out on Sept. 30. (The Auriemma excerpt was reprinted by permission of Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.)

Pep Guardiola has confirmed midfielder Rodri missed Manchester City’s resounding 5-1 win over Burnley due to having pain in his knee.

The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner suffered an ACL tear in September 2024 in the 2-2 draw with Arsenal which ruled him out for almost the entire rest of the season.

He has since had further setbacks which saw him miss City’s 4-0 Premier League opening win over Wolves, while he played only 15 minutes in the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham.

The Spain midfielder appeared to be returning to full fitness after starting three games in a week against Manchester United, Napoli and Arsenal but Guardiola confirmed Rodri was not named in the squad for the romp of Burnley due to pain in his knee again.

“Rodri was training and said, ‘I’m not able to play. I have a lot of pain in my knee. I cannot play, I cannot play.’ And I said, ‘if you cannot play, you cannot play’,” Guardiola said.

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Nico González started in place of Rodri at the Etihad on Saturday, as City rose to seventh in the table thanks to two Maxime Estève own goals, an Erling Haaland brace and a goal from Matheus Nunes.

Rico Lewis covered the defensive midfield role in the 2-0 Carabao Cup win over Huddersfield.

City face Monaco in the Champions League on Wednesday and Guardiola could not say whether Rodri would be fit for the clash with the Ligue 1 side. “I don’t know yet, I don’t know [about Rodri’s fitness],” Guardiola said.

Indian cricketers are under fire after sharing photos online featuring what appeared to be a “fake trophy,” just hours after the Men in Blue refused to accept the official Asia Cup 2025 silverware.

The move sparked widespread mockery, with many questioning why the players posed with a digitally added replica instead of the real prize raising doubts about what exactly they were celebrating.

Skipper Suryakumar Yadav, along with Shubman Gill, Tilak Varma and others, posted images on social media where a trophy sticker had been edited into the photos.

The posts quickly drew backlash. Fans ridiculed the stunt, noting the irony of refusing the real trophy from ACC Chief Mohsin Naqvi while celebrating with a fake one online.

One user quipped: “Another fake trophy… just like the fake ‘Op Sindoor’ glory. Shine outside, hollow inside.”

A defence analyst wrote: “From the delusional cricket team celebrating imaginary trophies, to the delusional Air Force Chief, and the delusional government cheering like a cartoon India truly lives in an alternate reality. Hilarious!”

Meanwhile, an Indian journalist commented: “Suryakumar Yadav may keep up the posturing, but he’ll have to accept that, despite being a star cricketer and India’s captain, he was reduced to a political pawn at the government’s whim.”

Asia Cup trophy debacle

The closing ceremony of the ACC Men’s T20 Asia Cup 2025 ended in controversy on Sunday after the Men in Blue declined to collect the winners’ trophy from Mohsin Naqvi, who also heads the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).

India earlier defeated Pakistan by five wickets in a tense final at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.

However, the post-match presentation was delayed after the Indian side refused to accept the trophy from Naqvi, damaging the gentleman’s game.

The ceremony concluded without the traditional handover, marking an unusual end to the tournament.

No customary handshakes were exchanged between players, continuing a pattern from earlier matches where political undercurrents and heightened tensions were evident.

“I have been informed by the ACC that the Indian cricket team will not be collecting their awards tonight.

So that does conclude the post-match presentation,” presenter Simon Doull said.

Pakistan skipper Salman Agha said India’s actions during the tournament had been “bad for cricket”.