UConn basketball was supposed to fly out of the Hartford airport at 6:00pm on Wednesday night. The Huskies’ flight to the Final Four in Phoenix suffered a delay of more than seven hours.
Dan Hurley is already using the adversity as motivation!
Logistical issues were first discovered shortly after UConn left Storrs for Windsor Locks. The scheduled flight crew was set to go over its FAA mandated hours and couldn’t make the trip. Something like that.
As a result, the Huskies were forced to wait… and wait… and wait… until a new plane with a new crew could get to Connecticut with enough hours to fly to Arizona. It did not arrive until after 11:30 pm on the East Coast.
If that was not nightmare enough, the team sat on the tarmac for over an hour. UConn’s plane was still at the gate at 12:49am. It taxied out to the runway shortly after 1:00am, but sat there for more than 30 minutes. Take off for the four hour and 52 minute flight did not commence until after 1:30am — more than seven hours after the original 6:00pm departure time.
The Huskies landed in Phoenix after 6:15am ET (3:15am local time).
The good news is that UConn does not play until the second session on Saturday evening. There is plenty of time to recover from the initial setback.
The bad news is that the athletes’ bodies are forced to adjust to a new time zone after being forced to stay up all night to start the trip. That will effect their internal clock and sleep habits far more than a standard cross-country road trip.
Meanwhile, Alabama arrived to Phoenix on Tuesday night. The Crimson Tide practiced at Grand Canyon on Wednesday afternoon and were already in bed long before the Huskies got on a plane.
Will this impact Saturday’s game? Time will tell.
Hurley is going to use the mishap to light a fire under his players!