When Dan Hurley was hired as the new men’s basketball coach at UConn in 2018, there were no promises made to him by UConn President Susan Herbst and the administration that the school would ultimately re-join the Big East Conference.

Still, the rumors that UConn would return to the Big East had been flying since the football schools including UConn, Syracuse and others splintered off and ultimately formed the American Athletic Conference in 2013.

"I wanted to be the coach at UConn regardless," Hurley, the 47-year-old Jersey City native, said a year ago. "That had been a dream of mine my whole coaching career, is to be the head coach here. I had hoped it would happen. When I first met with [AD] Dave Benedict and President Herbst, they made it clear to me that it might not, and [to] take this job with the understanding that you could very well be in the American [Athletic Conference] and don't take it based on rumors that we could be relocating."

Now the rumors are a reality and UConn will officially re-join the Big East next season, when there will be 11 men’s and women’s basketball teams in the league.

Hurley, who played point guard in the Big East at Seton Hall in the early 1990s, cannot wait.

“To play in a basketball conference of this caliber as we’re on the upswing is just incredibly exciting for the players,” Hurley, whose team finished 19-12, 10-8 in the American this past season, said Thursday. “You can already see ... as we’re turning the page looking to next year, there’s a tremendous amount of excitement around the program with this move.”

Hurley will now face his alma mater Seton Hall twice each season, once at Prudential Center and once at the XL Center in Hartford.

“I played Seton Hall a couple times when I was at Rhode Island so that won’t be a big deal from an emotional standpoint,” Hurley said.

It may be a bigger deal from an emotional standpoint for R.J. Cole, the Linden resident and UConn point guard who sat out last season following a transfer and will now get to play in front of family and friends in the Big East.

Cole played high school ball for Bob Hurley Sr. at St. Anthony’s, and the elder Hurley and his wife Chris will also now be able to see UConn play closer to home against geographic rivals.

Hurley said he and his staff have already begun scouting Big East foes like Seton Hall, St. John’s, Villanova, Georgetown and Providence.

“I took a couple of games from each team in the league,” Hurley said. “We have to start studying the conference more closely so we have a lot more familiarity. There’s different styles of play.”

UConn played Xavier and Villanova last season —both losses — while Hurley coached Rhode Island against Providence on a yearly basis, Seton Hall “a couple times” and Creighton in the NCAA Tournament (a 12-point win in 2017).

“We got a decent feel for the league but we have to study the conference,” he said.

One aspect of the move back to the Big East is the reduced travel. Hurley and his team will no longer have to board flights for long journeys to places like Memphis, Houston, Tulane, Tulsa and two Florida schools. And UConn fans can once again look forward to taking over Madison Square Garden during the Big East Tournament.

“We’re going to be at a lot less of a competitive disadvantage with the travel,” Hurley said. “It’s going to be so much more exciting for our fans. We were drawing amazing crowds this year, our fans were awesome. They saw the direction and saw where things were headed and I think they loved our team this year.”

Recruiting should also benefit, as Hurley and his staff can now recruit players from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic with the promise of playing in the Big East and at the Garden in March.

“The Big East has a lot of sway around here and obviously I know that that puts UConn back with the same company that they were always with,” Blair Academy coach Joe Mantegna said last year. “And people our age think of UConn as a Big East school, and I think that changes everything for recruiting for Danny.”

UConn’s 2020 recruiting class includes Andre Jackson, a 6-6 guard from Albany, and Javonte Brown-Ferguson, a 7-foot center from the Toronto area, both of whom said UConn’s return to the Big East helped sway their decision to choose the Huskies.

“My family can drive down,” Brown-Ferguson told The New York Times in December. “It’s a five-hour drive. Playing at Madison Square Garden, that’s just crazy thinking about it.”

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.