Luke Murray debuts at Boston College against Wagner, where Dan Hurley first hired him

Luke Murray's first game as a head coach comes against the school where his assistant career started. Boston College hosts Wagner on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern at Conte Forum, streaming on ACC Network Extra. Murray was an assistant at Wagner in 2010-11, on Dan Hurley's staff, and in an interview NBC Sports Boston posted last week he said Hurley "gave me my first job as an assistant at Wagner when I was 24 years old."

Boston College hired Murray on March 26 after five seasons on Hurley's UConn staff, which included national titles in 2023 and 2024. He is the program's 14th head coach. His résumé before UConn runs through Louisville, Xavier, Rhode Island, Towson and Wagner, with a start as director of operations at Quinnipiac.

"I owe it all to him"

Murray told NBC Sports Boston's Kayla Burton that the NCAA Tournament once looked like a far-off goal to him. "To actually have it come to fruition where we won two titles, but I owe it all to him. I owe it all to Coach Hurley," he said. He says BC will run practice the UConn way, with the same organization and daily discipline, and play an offense-first style.

The roster is almost entirely new. Murray said BC brought in 14 players through the transfer portal and has one returning scholarship player and one returning walk-on. He pointed out that the program hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since 2009. "It's my job to change that," he said.

He also put Burton through a shooting drill he calls triples, doubles, singles: three in a row from 10 to 12 feet, two from a step back, then one 3.

The Mazzulla connection

Murray says Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla is a good friend and that he plans to keep picking his brain. Their history goes back more than a decade, to when Murray tried to hire him as a graduate assistant at Rhode Island and Mazzulla said no. They reconnected while Murray was at UConn. When Murray took the BC job, Mazzulla drove him around the city and showed him his favorite restaurants. Murray also wants to pitch recruits on playing in a pro sports town.

Bill Murray's son

Murray is one of six sons of the actor Bill Murray. He said his father never wanted his kids to follow him into acting. "We all had to sort of find our own lane," he said, and it "took a long time to sort of earn the respect that you were doing something legitimate." Before the interview ended, he did play-by-play of his dad's half-court sequence with Michael Jordan in Space Jam.

After Wagner, BC plays UMass at TD Garden on Friday.