Don’t look now, but Bobby Hurley is following in his brother’s and father’s footsteps. He’s winning as a high-major head coach and has a team poised to be in the NCAA Tournament. It’s one that was far from expected.
In truth, a Hurley winning big is almost expected now. But what Bobby is doing at Arizona State is still pretty impressive, not unlike his team going into Lawrence and knocking off Kansas 95-85 on Sunday.
But like seemingly anything in Tempe, this one didn’t come easily.
Arizona State isn’t a perennial NCAA Tournament team – not by a long shot. They have gone to the NCAA Tournament just five times in the past 30 years, which includes the Sweet 16 team in 1995 whose appearance was later vacated by the NCAA due to a point shaving scandal. Hurley is the fifth head coach (four if you don’t count Don Newman, who was interim head coach in 1997-98 after Bill Frieder resigned in September of 1997 because of the aforementioned scandal) in the last 30 years at the school, and they have all tried to make regular NCAA Tournament appearances. Frieder did it twice including the vacated one, Rob Evans did it once in eight years, and Herb Sendek did it twice in eight years. Evans and Sendek were shown the door after that time, in Sendek’s case just a year removed from such a trip.
So while there’s a lot to attract talent there, it just hasn’t happened, at least not enough to product a regular Pac-12 contender and/or NCAA Tournament team.
With this team, expectations externally were not all that high. Aside from Tra Holder, one of the more underrated players nationally, this wasn’t a team full of proven stars. Holder, though, has played like an All-American, with 40 points in the Las Vegas Invitational championship win over Xavier last month and a big 29-point outing on Sunday, where he went 8-16 from the field and handed out seven assists. He had good help, with Shannon Evans II adding 22 and freshman Remy Martin coming off the bench for 21 points on 8-11 shooting and getting five steals.
The Sun Devils got off to a slow start and needed an early timeout, and trailed by as many as 13 points in the first half. They couldn’t quite close the gap before intermission, but managed to get within 40-37. The second half was a whole other ballgame, as they got hot from the field and outscored the Jayhawks 58-45.
That’s right, a Kansas team allowed 58 points in a half, in a game at Allen Fieldhouse.
Arizona State shot almost 51 percent from the field for the game, including 14-28 from long range. They kept turnovers down to 10, giving it away less than the Jayhawks as Kansas committed 16 turnovers.
Arizona State enters final exam week with a 9-0 record that includes wins over San Diego State, the aforementioned one over Xavier, Friday night’s win over St. John’s, and now this one. Even more impressive is that all four of those wins have come by double digits. They aren’t done being tested, as they host Vanderbilt after exams as well.
Right now, the Sun Devils are carrying the flag for the Pac-12, a conference that as a whole has not had a good month of action since the season started. They could be 12-0 by the time they face arch-rival Arizona – the team from that state most figured would be the clearly better one this season.
Bobby Hurley has other ideas. He won big as a player at Duke, and now he’s winning as a coach, just like his dad and his brother.
Side Dishes
Either Villanova or Michigan State will be the new No. 1 team in the polls after Duke went down on Saturday and Kansas lost twice this week. The Wildcats continued to roll in Big 5 play, taking out La Salle 77-68 on Sunday.
Washington was the other team to beat Kansas this week, but the Huskies couldn’t duplicate the result back home against Gonzaga. The Bulldogs ran away the Huskies 97-70 behind 23 points and 12 rebounds from Johnathan Williams and 21 from Zach Norvell Jr. The Bulldogs also had a big 40-27 edge on the glass, including 13 offensive rebounds. Gonzaga has now won 11 of the last 12 meetings between the in-state rivals, which is likely a big reason the teams had not met in the state of Washington for 11 years before resuming last year in Spokane for the first of at least four games.
James Madison continued to be a hard-luck team on Sunday, losing a heartbreaker 74-71 at Richmond as Spider freshman Jacob Gilyard hit a deep three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left. The Dukes, who have just two players with any Division I experience prior to the season, have played six games in a row decided by six points or less, going 2-4 in that span. Less than a week earlier, they lost at The Citadel on a three-pointer in the closing seconds.
Tonight’s Menu
It’s the beginning of a light week with an appropriately light night.
- Louisville hosts Bryant in a Gotham Classic campus game (7 p.m.)
- Minnesota hosts Drake (8 p.m.)
- Texas Southern is still looking for their first win, as they have played a monster schedule thus far that continues at Oregon (10 p.m.)
