Analysis: Is Bobby Hurley's future with Arizona State in jeopardy after subpar season?
How quickly they forget.
A year ago the Arizona State men's basketball team went 23-13. Its best showing of the season came in an NCAA play-in game when it cruised past Nevada by 25 points. The Sun Devils lost their next game to heavily favored TCU by two points. Had ASU made its free throws it would have won that game too, and who knows how many more.
A week after the season ended, coach Bobby Hurley signed a contract extension that would keep him in Tempe through 2026.
This season hasn't panned out as planned. Most of the major players from last season's team who didn't exhaust their eligibility hit the transfer portal, leaving Hurley to rebuild. The team has 10 new players and hasn't meshed well. A couple of injuries have left him with no depth. The Sun Devils are 13-13, and they're coming off an embarrassing loss to their biggest rival which has a lot of the fan base lobbying for his departure.
ASU has made the NCAA Tournament three times in the past five chances (2023, 2019,and 2018) and won two games. In the previous 32 seasons (1986-2017), ASU made three NCAA Tournaments combined and went 2-3 in those appearances.
More: Arizona State's Bobby Hurley back on college basketball coaches on the hot seat lists
Had the 2020 postseason not been canceled due to COVID the Sun Devils were likely in that field, too, so it should have been four berths in six years. So while many have wanted more than just getting in the tournament, it's not like Hurley's predecessors regularly made deep runs into March.
Yes, Hurley is as animated as it gets when it comes to sideline demeanor and that rubs many the wrong way. But that fiery demeanor is one thing that made him perhaps the best point guard of all-time in the college game, leading Duke to two national championships. Let's not forget the career assist total that will likely never be broken.
Many don't like ASU's style of play, the whole "no shot is a bad shot" thing. Many prefer a more structured offense, with a little less freedom for the players. But Hurley's style of play and so-called "freedom" is something that is attractive to the athletes.
Win or lose, Hurley is always articulate in his post-game comments. He doesn't sugarcoat anything. He is brutally honest. But this season does appear to be wearing on him.
Maybe it would be good for both parties to go their separate ways. But now really is not the time. Think about it. ASU doesn't have an athletic director, another thing that has rankled some in the fan base. Arizona hired one on Monday, just a couple of weeks after Dave Heeke was fired. ASU parted ways with Ray Anderson in November and the school doesn't seem close to naming a replacement.
'We are so unserious': Arizona State fans anxious over athletic director hire delay
Hurley's name has been linked to the vacancy at DePaul and for good reason. His lead assistant, Jermaine Kimbrough, hails from Ohio and he has experience coaching in the Chicago area. Another of Hurley's assistants, Nick Irvin, is from Chicago and has extensive history coaching at the high school level there. But DePaul is in the Big East and heading that program means he'd have to square off against brother Dan's UConn team at least twice a year. Both brothers have said they prefer not to play each other. So that one is probably off the table.
ASU has five games left in the regular season. Then it's on to the last ever Pac-12 basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Let's say Hurley thinks this is a good time for a change. If there is no athletic director, then just how fast is the process of finding a successor going to go? Probably not very quickly. So, the the season finishes. Players are going to hit the portal. It's inevitable, especially if there is a void at head coach.
Then you're going to have a lot of defections, with no head coach searching for replacements. Yes, you can appoint an interim coach who might start the process there, but how many players are going to commit to a program without a "head coach."
The other thing to think about is the ASU position is not a destination job, one that will attract top-tier candidates. It's quite the opposite. There doesn't appear to be a lot of administrative support for the program. If there were, the situation with the aging Desert Financial Arena would have been addressed by now. The school's badly positioned to deal with NIL and while it has improved, the Sun Devils are still lagging woefully behind, with the move to the basketball crazy Big 12 looming.
This isn't Eugene or Corvallis or Pullman or Tucson where everything revolves around the college because there is nothing else to rally around. In the Phoenix market, you win or you're irrelevant. And it's a place with a lot of transplants and retirees who are not necessarily invested in the school or have long-existing ties to it.
Whatever one might think about Hurley, his name still carries clout when it comes to marching into a prospect's living room and trying to recruit him.
Hurley also appears to have a good high school recruiting class in hand with 247Sports ranking it 16th overall and fifth in the Big 12 behind Baylor, Kansas, Arizona and TCU, all basketball heavyweights. Four of the five recruits are 6-foot-8 or taller, addressing one of the team's biggest areas of need.
ASU only has a few players who are exhausting their eligibility — Alonzo Gaffney, Jose Perez and Zane Meeks, the latter out for the balance of the season with a foot injury anyway. If the expected core returns, newcomers come in and contribute and a few impact transfers are added, maybe this team isn't that far away from competing. Yes, those are a lot of "ifs."
For now, Hurley needs to see the Sun Devils through the transition to the Big 12.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What does ASU's disappointing basketball season mean for Bobby Hurley?
