By JIMMY GOLEN
BOSTON (AP) — Boston College will have to understand if new basketball coach Luke Murray is unable to give the Eagles his full attention for now.
The UConn assistant took just a couple of days off to pop by Chestnut Hill this week before rejoining the Huskies for a trip to the Final Four. The plan is to win March Madness on Monday night — a third NCAA championship in four years — get in a little celebration early Tuesday morning, then head back to Boston for the opening of the transfer portal that same day.
“It’s been wild, but I’m so appreciative,” Murray told a packed auditorium of reporters, BC officials and current and former players at his introductory news conference on Tuesday. “Honestly, you can’t ask for a better set of circumstances.”
A longtime college assistant and the son of actor Bill Murray, Luke Murray signed on for his first head coaching job earlier this month while the Huskies were preparing to face Michigan State in the Sweet 16. After beating the Spartans, Murray was responsible for scouting the next opponent, Duke, while also trying to line up a potential staff and organizing his family for a move to Boston.
And then things really got crazy, with UConn rallying from a 19-point deficit against the Blue Devils on Sunday and winning on Braylon Mullins’ last-second shot from near midcourt. The team got back to Connecticut at around 2 a.m., Murray still had to put his kids to bed, and then he woke up for the 90-minute to drive to Boston.
He met with his players and others involved with the program on Monday, had his coming out party on Tuesday, and on Wednesday he is headed back to Connecticut for the flight to the Final Four in Indianapolis. The second-seeded Huskies play No. 3 seed Illinois on Saturday, with the winner advancing to Monday’s national championship game against either Michigan or Arizona.
“It’s been chaotic for sure,” Murray said. “This has just been probably the week of a lifetime.”
Murray takes over for Earl Grant, who was fired after five seasons in which the Eagles never made the NCAA Tournament and finished above .500 just once. The program that has gone through four coaches, five athletic directors and two conferences since its last March Madness appearance in 2009 — the longest NCAA slump in program history.
Murray, who turns 41 on Wednesday, has spent 18 years as an assistant at Quinnipiac, Post, Arizona, Wagner, Towson, Rhode Island, Xavier and Louisville before joining Dan Hurley’s staff at UConn. In five years, Murray has helped build two national championship teams — at least.
The new Eagles coach said he knows that his departure for a New England rival will sting for Huskies fans who still resent BC for joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005, a move that supercharged an era of conference realignment and left UConn in a severely damaged Big East.
He said he’s working to “mend some fences.”
“I’m going to try to serve as a conduit of peace and try to bring everybody together,” he said.
And beating Duke was a good start.
“I figured as much,” Murray said with a smirk. “Our sole motivation in winning that game was to bring these two fan bases together.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
