Bobby Hurley is known to wear his heart on his sleeve, so it’s little surprise that the topsy-turvy Arizona State season left him physically drained on the final game of the regular season.
“It was a very emotional day,” Hurley told reporters after Arizona State’s regular season-ending 84-83 loss to Stanford, a game in which they came back from a 19-point deficit only to fall short — a fitting end to their conference campaign.
“I’m not surprised we struggled early in the game and had a deficit, just with the emotion and what the senior class means to me, and what they’ve done for me personally, and the relationship we have. I struggled myself to really get involved in the game and get connected to the game, so I could imagine what our seniors had to go through and the emotions playing the last game here.”
Hurley and the Sun Devils are going to have to get it together in a hurry if they are to solidify a tenuous hold on a potential NCAA Tournament bid. That’s where they’re counting on the topsy to outweigh the turvy.
Arizona State has two of the best wins in the country this season, and perhaps the conference’s best two, with non-conference victories over then-No. 15 Xavier and then-No. 2 Kansas. Now the Musketeers are ranked third, the Jayhawks sixth, and the Sun Devils — who climbed all the way up to No. 3 in the rankings — are nowhere to be found.
That’s what happens after a sub-.500 conference slate.
No matter how good things looked in late-December, they look different now.
Especially on Saturday, when the Sun Devils closed up the regular season with such a listless first half against the Cardinal.
“You have to give them credit: they made plays and they made shots,” Arizona State senior guard Kodi Justice said then. “It was difficult, but to be able to have the determination and the fight and the will to be able to comeback from being down 19 just to give ourselves a fighting chance, it just shows how determined this team is.”
To be fair, the Sun Devils offer more to the selection committee than just a sparkling non-conference record.
Arizona State has yet to be blown out this season, and even more so, the Sun Devils lead the conference in scoring and rank 19th in the country at 83.5 points per game.
Will that be enough, perhaps with a win or two in Las Vegas, to convince the committee that Arizona State belongs?
Hurley hopes so.
“The tournament is about having teams in there that are exciting, that are in every game, that are going to be extremely tough to beat, and I think we’ve proven that through the whole season,” Hurley told reporters last week. “Even in our losses, we’re extremely difficult to beat.”
