GLENDALE, Ariz. – Dan Hurley was well on his way toward proclaiming UConn’s back-to-back national championships as being “up there in terms of the greatest 2-year runs a program maybe has ever had” in the NCAA Tournament.

Then he realized what he was saying and slammed hard on the brakes.

By putting his Huskies at the top of the list, he would be diminishing a similar accomplishment achieved by his brother, Bobby, who won 2 straight titles as a point guard for Duke in 1991-92.

“I can’t say anything about Duke,” Hurley said, “Because I’m going to piss my brother off.”

Sibling rivalries are commonplace in every family.

Even the Hurleys.

But when your family is to college basketball what the Kardashians are to reality TV, you tend to stick together and revel in every success that comes your way.

That’s why Bobby, now a coach in at Arizona State, wouldn’t think of being anywhere else on Monday other than in the stands at State Farm Stadium cheering his kid brother’s top-seeded team on to a title-clinching 75-60 victory against Purdue.

“We’re like best friends,” Bobby told SDS proudly shortly before the championship game in a suburb of his current hometown. “We grew up with the game. It’s what we know. And we’ve both excelled in our own ways. For me to see him do so well and accomplish something special is an amazing feeling.”

Winning championships has become a Hurley family tradition.

Not only do the brothers have 4 national titles between them, 2 each, but their dad Bob Hurley Sr. has 4 national titles of his own to go with 28 state crowns as the long-time coach at St. Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, NJ.

The family patriarch won more than 1,000 games in his storied career, earning 3 National Coach of the Year awards. In 2010, he became only the 3rd high school coach to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

If he ever wondered how he might have done had he chosen to move up to the college level, Dan said he needed only to have looked down from his box on the club level at State Farm Stadium to get an idea.

“My dad, he looks at me, he looks at my brother, he sees us coaching in college. What would it have looked like for him if he was doing it?” Dan said. “I know it means a lot to me and Bob again. We’re the version of my father that would be coaching in college.”

Dan Hurley might be among the top tier of college coaches right now, so highly-regarded that his name almost immediately was linked to the Kentucky job, which he said he isn’t interested in.

But he readily admits that he’s not even the best coach in his family.

At least, not yet.

“Even after back-to-back for me, I’m still just a worse version of him,” Dan said. “A little bit worse. I’m getting better. And I’m coming for him.”

Dan’s UConn teams have compiled an incredible 68-11 record during the past 2 seasons, capping both with 6-0 runs in the NCAA Tournament.

The Huskies have won each of those 12 postseason games by double figures, the first team ever to do that. And they’re only the 3rd team ever – and first not named UCLA – to win 2 national championship games by 15 or more points.

That’s a level of domination far more impressive than even that of Bobby’s back-to-back champion Blue Devils.

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As great as those 2 Mike Krzyzewski-coached teams were, it took a clutch late 3-pointer by Bobby to win the first title in ‘91 and a miracle buzzer-beater by Christian Laettner just to get to the Final Four the following year.

Still, a championship is a championship. And to have 4 NCAA titles between the brothers is, as Bobby put it, “insane.”

“To do it as I did as a player on the front end and him to do it the way he’s doing it as a coach on the back end is truly amazing,” he said.

Bobby had by far the better playing career of the 2. In 140 games at Duke, he scored 1,731 points and finished as the NCAA’s all-time leader in assists with 1,076. He was a 3-time All-ACC selection, the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four in ’92 and a Wooden Award finalist as a senior the following year.

Dan, who was also a point guard and shares the same fiery personality as his brother and dad, got off to a shaky start during his first 2 seasons at Seton Hall. But after taking a redshirt season to step away from the game and learn to better handle the pressure of living up to high standard Bobby set, he returned to average double figures and better than 5 assists per game for the Pirates in 1994-95 and 95-96.

As coaches, their career trajectories have flipped.

While Bobby is 197-151 in his 11 seasons at Buffalo and Arizona State, Dan won nearly as many games (141) to go along with those 2 championships in just his 6 seasons at UConn.

Their combined accomplishments beg the question of which is harder, winning back-to-back nattys as a player or doing it as a coach?

In true Hurley fashion, Bobby isn’t taking sides.

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“I made it look really easy. We were 18-2 (in the NCAA Tournament) in my 4 years and I played with some great players,” he said. “But now on the other side of this thing, I see how hard it is to put a team together like this, especially with the change and the turnover and all the obstacles you have to overcome.”

Having won 4 titles between them, each in back-to-back fashion, both brothers have a deep appreciation for what the other has accomplished.

“It’s incredible to join Bob in that club,” Dan said. “Bob was in the arena (on Monday). He wanted to kind of stay out of the camera lens. He was in a box enjoying the comfort of that. It was just awesome to have him here.”

It was even more meaningful that Bob Sr. was also in attendance.

There’s a good chance that they all got together sometime in the hours after the nets came down to celebrate the addition of yet another championship to the collection of Basketball’s First Family.