Dan Hurley - UConn 'manifested' tournament home-court advantage - ESPN

BOSTON — In a quest for back-to-back national titles, UConn coach Dan Hurley saw a competitive advantage for the Huskies soon after they cut down the nets in Houston last year.

Way back then, he saw UConn's potential path back to the Final Four only requiring bus trips. And with the Huskies handling business in the first two rounds of the men's NCAA tournament in Brooklyn against No. 16 Stetson and No. 9 Northwestern, Hurley said his team has earned an expected home-court advantage in Boston this weekend.

«We hope the crowd can be a Storrs North for us,» Hurley said, referencing the school's home in Connecticut. «Maybe feel a little bit like [Madison Square Garden] does for us when we play there [in] the Big East tournament and during the Big East regular season, too.»

He estimated that 60% of the crowd could be wearing UConn blue when the top-seeded Huskies play No. 5 San Diego State in a rematch of last year's national title game. UConn is the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament and has been considered the best team in the sport for a vast majority of this season.

UConn (33-3) enters the Sweet 16 on a nine-game win streak, which includes the Big East tournament championship. The Huskies have just one loss — a blowout at Creighton — since Dec. 21. That caliber of play built up the home-court advantage.

«We've earned that by the season that we've had,» Hurley said. «This wasn't some gift by the committee to try to make it as easy as possible for us. We've earned our position. We've manifested Brooklyn to Boston since, really, April, since last year when we won the championship.

»We've worked incredibly hard over that time period to earn the opportunity to play in front of hopefully a 60% UConn type of crowd."

Hurle