Funny as it was only about 14 months ago URI alumni were calling him a second Jim baron and wanted Hurley out. That late season surge last year made him a ton of money.
I'm more worried about losing the players/recruits at URI then i am at losing Hurley as I don't consider him a good in game coach. URI under him was perhaps the most shambolic team in the nation down the stretch in close games, watch the NCAA second round game URI vs Oregon, now imagine this happening in nearly every close game the team was in for 5 years. In a way it will be nice not having the usually heartattack anytime we are up by less then 12 with less then 3 minutes left
He is an elite leader of men however and the kids love playing for him and i think this is probably underrated if anything.. But will he able to recruit without well without Dave Cox and Preston Murphy? Hurley is of the Al skinner recruiting type where he lets the assistants do all the work and apparently has little to no interaction with recruits prior to visiting the school. However it must be said his closing percentage was amazing and he got basically every high profile recruit who came on an official to sign with URI over more high profile schools. Overall i would say he's clearly below Skinner and Harrick, in terms of URI coaches I've followed, but Also miles ahead of Baron and jerry D, Tom Penders is before my time so i can't comment on him.
As for URI, i can't help feeling this is like 20 years ago when Jim Harrick left. We made the original sin of letting Lamar Odom and a few other players decide the new coach ( Odom would get bullied into signing with an agent and never came back to URI anyways ofc) We went overnight from a team that was in the NCAA most year and had missed the final four by the most absurd comeback imaginable by Stanford in 1997 to missing the NCAA's for 18 straight years. I'm too old to wait another two decades this time.