New conference, Recruiting success, fresh perspective have Bobby Hurley feeling reinvigorated

When the 2023-24 college basketball season ended, Bobby Hurley’s future at ASU was in question. The Sun Devils (14-18) turned in arguably their worst season in the coach’s nine-year tenure. They finished 11th in the soon-to-die Pac-12, they bowed out of the Pac-12 Tournament in embarrassing fashion in the first round, they missed the NCAA Tournament for the third time in four seasons, and numerous players entered the transfer portal, including leading scorer and assist man Frankie Collins, Jamiya Neal, Bryant Selebangue, Kamari Lands, Malachi Davis, Akil Watson and Braelon Green.

While Hurley and ASU had agreed to a contract extension and raise on March 21, 2023 — just after ASU made the 2023 NCAA Tournament with a first-four win — Hurley hadn’t signed the extension when the 2023-24 season ended, his contract was due to expire at the end of this month, and more than a few fans and pundits wondered if it made sense to roll it back with Hurley.

Much has changed in the past three months.

Hurley signed the extension. Reports surfaced that he was in negotiations to film an inside-access style docuseries to augment the program’s visibility and NIL-funding mechanisms. At Hurley’s urging, multiple donors also stepped forward to help the NIL cause, and then Hurley landed what is likely the best recruiting class in his 10-year tenure, bringing aboard forwards Amier Ali, Jayden Quaintance and guard Joson Sanon as the headliners in a group that 247Sports ranks as the fourth-best recruiting class in the nation, and tops in the Big 12.

On a pause during a family vacation in Japan, Hurley admitted what seemed obvious from the outside: he is feeling rejuvenated.

“I just feel very hopeful,” he said by phone. “I feel like there’s a new challenge in front of us with the move to the Big 12. Although I pride myself on appreciating the history of the game and am disappointed that the Pac-12 dissolved, the Big 12 is a tremendous basketball league and it has motivated me to really be vocal about trying to generate money through our NIL program and encouraging people to get involved.”

At Duke, Hurley became one of the greatest point guards in college basketball history; a fiery competitor who led the Blue Devils to three Final Fours and national championships in 1991 and 1992. While it would be inaccurate to say that complacency had set in in the underwhelming Pac-12, Hurley freely admits that the move to the Big 12 has awakened his competitive fires.

“You’d better roll up your sleeves and be ready to battle in this conference and I have a good competitive spirit,” he said. “I’m a fighter, so I’m prepared for it and I think our team will be as well. I think what we’ve been able to put together in terms of rebuilding our roster has me as hopeful as I’ve been probably since I’ve been here about the possibilities with this team.

“I’ve been doing this for 15 years now so this move is not something I’m overwhelmed about. It’s going to be fun, exciting, and interesting playing in these new venues and getting to coach against different coaches that I have not coached against. In the Pac 12, there was a fair amount of retention amongst the coaches in the league. There were a number of guys with tenure so you kind of knew the style of how those teams were going to play. Now you’re in a whole different league where they don’t have a really good feel for you and you for them. That process is going to be extremely interesting and it’s got me dialed in.”

That mind set includes finally embracing a college landscape that the transfer portal and NIL have drastically altered.

“I was very old school, very into the purity of college athletics and amateurism and the concept of playing for the school,” he said. “It’s something that I did as a player and it was ingrained in me that this is how it should be, but the rules have changed. The landscape has changed.

“There’s no going back to the pre-NIL world, the pre-portal world. You have to evolve and adapt, and we all have to do it. I was very resistant, but now I’m going to actively make sure that Arizona State has a chance to compete. If Kansas and Arizona and North Carolina and Duke and everybody else is doing it, I’m going to make sure that we can do the best job we can to put ourselves in a position to be successful.”

Hurley said the level of donations to the program is unprecedented.

“From an NIL standpoint, we’re right there with many schools, which in the past we could not say, particularly last year,” he said. “We’ve addressed it and we’ve had some good fortune with the docuseries.That has opened up some doors.”

Hurley said there will be a time and place to further discuss the docuseries when all of the pieces are in place, but he did provide some insight regarding the format.

“I’ve given more access than I ever would to anybody to see what we do behind the scenes, and I’ve agreed to be mic’d up quite a bit more than I ever would allow in the past for a variety of reasons,” he said. “That’s a little scary, just based on the things that I could potentially say in a game or practice, but people not only want to eat the food, they want to know how it’s cooked. 

“So much of this is about what happens behind the scenes, starting in a few weeks with our summer program, and then we’ll be going full tilt until the ball goes up in November. With the storylines of our players, there could be episodes about Jayden Quaintance and some of the other interesting guys that we have in our program. We’re excited to participate in it. I think it’s a great way to brand our basketball program, and also for the student-athletes to work on building their brand, as well as getting more exposure and giving people the opportunity to see who they are more than just when they watch them play on television.”

With the addition of Sanon last week, Hurley sees an incoming class that will make an immediate impact.

“Joson’s very advanced skills translate immediately. He is college ready and wired to score the ball on all three levels,” Hurley said. “I would think Jayden is gonna have an immediate impact and Amir Ali is a guy that’s highly rated and has got a chance to help us right away. All three of the guys you mentioned will be impact freshmen in our program.”

The elephant in the room remains 50-year-old Desert Financial Arena, a venue whose guts are badly outdated and often cited in the Sun Devils’ ability to recruit.

“It’s gonna need to be renovated,” Hurley said. “I’m not sure what the long term goal is and how we go about doing that, but I know that our leaders understand that would be a priority at some point. But the reality is, we have a tremendous practice facility with the Weatherup Center. NBA teams use it when they’re in town to play the Suns. It’s a big-time setup. We do 90 percent of our workouts in that facility.

“As for the arena, I would say that when my team is playing UCLA or Oregon or Arizona and there’s 12,000 people in the arena and everybody’s going nuts when our players run out to the floor, they love the environment. It’s my job to put a team on the floor that people are going to want to watch this year and show up and provide that environment. I think that everybody understands that it has to be a goal of ours as an athletic department to work on Desert Financial, and I think it’s on everybody’s radar, but as far as me being successful, it doesn’t impact things as much as people might think.”

Hurley is hopeful that with Graham Rossini now in place as the department’s new athletic director, the program can finally achieve its potential.

“I think he’s a very sharp guy and I think he understands the challenges in front of us as an athletic department, particularly with the move to the Big 12,” Hurley said. “In the conversations I’ve had with him, he’s very committed to and knows there’s a lot of potential with men’s basketball. If it’s successful, it could certainly be a revenue generating opportunity.

“He’s great at the business side of sports. I think he’ll reach out to the community. He’ll try and get people involved in understanding that we need resources and a commitment. I think he’ll go across campus and work closely with Dr. Crow. We’ve got to be prepared to do as much as we can as an athletic department to be successful. When you talk about Michael Crow and Jim Rund and Graham Rossini, right down the line, I think we’re all pulling in the same direction.”

Top photo via Getty Images

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