Today is Big East media day at Madison Square Garden, and the defending national champion UConn men's basketball program was voted third in the conference's coaches' poll, and head coach Dan Hurley kept it real when talking about where his team ranks.

“It's all a bunch of s**t anyway, so it doesn't matter,” Dan Hurley said, via Gavin Keefe of The Day. “Jordan Hawkins was not picked on an all-conference team last year and he led us to a dominant run and was a lottery pick.”

Dan Hurley's UConn basketball team loses Jordan Hawkins, Adama Sanogo and Andre Jackson Jr. to the NBA this season. The Huskies are expecting returners Donovan Clingan, Alex Karaban and Tristen Newton to do a lot of the heavy-lifting for the team, along with a top-five recruiting class that is headlined by preseason Big East freshman of the year Stephon Castle.

UConn comes in behind Marquette and Creighton in the Big East coaches' poll, and just three voting points in front of Villanova, according to David Borges of CT Insider.. Many UConn fans were surprised to see Donovan Clingan not on the preseason all-Big East first team.

Although Hurley downplayed the validity of these preseason polls, he admitted that it is hard to do these rankings because of the strength of the Big East conference.

“I mean some of the stuff I get this year probably more than other years, if you really look at the all-conference teams player-wise, it was hard when you got through the second team,” Hurley said, via Keefe. “Like really good players didn't make one of the first two teams. … We have three teams ranked in the top eight in the AP Poll and we have probably three, maybe even more, four national championship contenders this year.”

Expectations are high coming off a national championship. It will be interesting to see how Hurley and the Huskies fare this season.