The Thanksgiving holiday isn’t just for football, it’s increasingly become a time for top college basketball matchups around the country. And UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley had some very direct thoughts on how he’s approaching the coming week to prepare for a Top 15 showdown against Illinois at Madison Square Garden on Black Friday.
Hurley is known, well, as a hothead. After winning back-to-back national championships, UConn went 24-11 last season and only made it into the second round of the tournament. And Hurley’s on-court outbursts aimed at referees drew more headlines and scrutiny than his team’s play.
So it may not come as a surprise that Dan Hurley would not care about the sacredness of eating turkey on Thanksgiving Day. After asking what it was in turkey that made people fall asleep after their huge Thanksgiving meals, the UConn coach had a typically blunt and expletive-filled message about the holiday and how he will prepare his team .
Always prepared. 4D Chess. pic.twitter.com/pzBT6YkkI5
— Postradamus (@Postradamus4) November 24, 2025
“We’re not going to eat the f—ing tryptophan on Thursday and be sluggish as s— on Friday. So we’re going to eat the tryptophan, the turkey and everything on Wednesday so that all the tryptophan is out of our system by the time we get to MSG. Here we go,” Hurley declared.
All righty then!
Although tryptophan in turkey is claimed to be the reason why so many people on Thanksgiving enjoy a nap at some point during the day while watching football, it is a bit of a myth. Experts have been consistent in saying that although large doses of tryptophan can make you sleepy, there isn’t enough in a serving of turkey to actually make a tangible difference in your energy levels. Rather, it’s the huge amount of carbs and fluctuations in blood sugar that are a more likely culprit.
Of course, if a reporter tried to tell Dan Hurley that in his press conference, he might have tried to vaporize them on the spot for correcting him.
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