Game changer: Sun Devils' marquee sports were on the rise in 2019-20 before Covid stunted their growth

On a pause during a recent family vacation in Japan, Sun Devils men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley admitted to feeling rejuvenated and hopeful as he approaches the 2024-25 season. It took Hurley four years to reach that point, but who can blame him?

In that short span of time, the NCAA relaxed the transfer rules to the point where college athletics are in an annual state of free agency. The advent of NIL added a financial component to that free-agency climate, and the Pac-12 crumbled, leading most of its members to depart for the Big Ten or, like Arizona State, 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,” Hurley said.

Hurley thought he had everything sorted and rolling four seasons ago. Late in the 2019-20 Pac-12 season, ASU was 20-11 overall, 11-7 and tied for third place in the Pac-12. The Sun Devils were headed to their third straight NCAA Tournament (which would have been the first time for the program since the early 1960s) and they were fielding arguably the best team of Hurley’s five-year tenure in Tempe.

While Hurley admits that the aforementioned changes created both a challenge and an opportunity for him, the greatest challenge came before any of those other developments.

In March of 2020, COVID-19 stopped the world, forcing global lockdowns, recommended quarantines, widespread fear of a deadly pandemic, and the cancellation of most pro and college teams’ seasons.

“We were excited to go to the Pac-12 tournament so it was surreal to watch everything go down the way it did in just a few days,” Hurley said. “It was just very difficult because you always wonder what could have been? I think we were well positioned that year to not only make a run in the Pac-12 tournament, but in the NCAA Tournament as well.”

The pandemic took its toll on Hurley’s program. The Devils were only able to play 25 games in 2020-21. Starting point guard Remy Martin transferred to Kansas after that season and won a national championship in 2022. Meanwhile, ASU has managed just one NCAA Tournament appearance over the past four seasons.

Men’s basketball wasn’t the only ASU program to suffer, however. All of the Sun Devils’ marquee programs (football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and hockey) were on the upswing when Covid hit. The women’s basketball team was headed to its seventh straight NCAA Tournament, the football team was coming off an 8-5, 2019 season and a Sun Bowl victory in Herm Edwards’ second season at the helm.

The baseball team was coming off a 38-19 season and an NCAA Regional appearance in 2019, it had the punishing bat of 2020 MLB first overall pick Spencer Torkelson, and coach Tracy Smith had his best recruiting class in his seven seasons in Tempe. Even the five-year-old hockey program was in the midst of its best season with a program-record 22 wins, a No. 13 national ranking, and a second straight NCAA Tournament appearance all but locked down for the field of 16 teams, despite playing at decrepit and now demolished Oceanside Ice Arena.

To gain perspective on Covid’s impact, PHNX Sports spoke to coaches for those respective programs, to the radio voice of Sun Devil athletics, Tim Healey, and to men’s basketball director of operations Mickey Mitchell, who was a player on that 2019-20 team.

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Sun Devil football

When Suns Devils athletic director Ray Anderson hired his friend and former client, Herm Edwards, the criticism was overwhelming. Cronyism complaints aside, Edwards hadn’t coached a game since the Kansas City Chiefs fired him in January of 2009, and he had never coached at the college level. We all know how Edwards’ tenure at Arizona State ended, but there is no denying that he silenced most of his critics in his first two seasons in Tempe. 

In his first season (2018), ASU upset No. 15 Michigan State at Sun Devil Stadium, then went into the LA Coliseum and beat USC. In his second season, he went 8-5 and his 28th-ranked 2019 recruiting class was headlined by four-star quarterback Jayden Daniels, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.

“When you look at his first three seasons as separate entities, every one of those seasons ended with the team on an upward trajectory,” Healey said. “In 2018, they won four of their last five regular season games, including a win at USC, a dominant, 18-point home win over a very good Utah team, and a scintillating, 19-point, fourth-quarter rally to win the Territorial Cup game at Arizona. 

“In 2019, after a 5-1 start, they lost four in a row, but they finished strong that year. They had that electrifying home-field upset of sixth-ranked Oregon on a Saturday night in late November that was televised by ABC. That was the game where Jayden Daniels threw for over 400 yards and hit (2020 No. 25 overall pick) Brandon Aiyuk with an 82-yard touchdown pass on the third-and-17 in the fourth quarter. Then they beat Arizona at home in the Territorial Cup game, and then they went to the Sun Bowl and defeated Florida State with a come-from-behind win.

“Even in 2020 when they only played four games, they finished with back-to-back wins; a 70-7 annihilation of Arizona, and then they go up to Oregon State a week before Christmas on a rainy night in Corvallis and they beat Oregon State soundly.”

In the middle of some of the game cancellations in 2020, Healey was broadcasting his weekly show with Edwards when he noticed the coach getting sick right before his eyes. COVID ravaged the team and that season.

Out of concern for everyone’s health, the NCAA instituted a recruiting dead period, but per The Athletic report linked above, “In the spring of 2021, an anonymous former staffer sent a package to Arizona State’s compliance office, accusing the football staff of hosting recruits and paying for their travel during the pandemic dead period. According to a Yahoo! report, the package contained receipts and screenshots of emails that might prove the allegations. Per Yahoo!, tight ends coach Adam Breneman, defensive backs coach Chris Hawkins and receivers coach Prentice Gill, as well as Regina Jackson, the mother of Daniels, had helped book or finance flights for high school recruits.”

Former staff members also told The Athletic that “Pierce directed most of the alleged wrongdoings, but Edwards was involved when necessary, meeting with top prospects.”

Many assistant coaches bolted after the allegations surfaced. Daniels transferred to LSU. On Sep 18, 2022, Anderson fired Edwards, and one year later, amid widespread criticism, Anderson vacated his post.

Hearing that Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson is stepping down.

— Craig Morgan (@CraigSMorgan) November 13, 2023

Both Edwards and Anderson declined interview requests for this story.

While new coach Kenny Dillingham is trying to rebuild, the Sun Devils haven’t had a winning season since 2019 and the NCAA recently levied sanctions against the program that have hampered Dillingham’s efforts.

“It’s obviously easy to criticize the Herm hire now, but I could make a good argument that in the first three years, the Herm hire with the grand experiment of having an NFL-type, front-office set-up was working,” Healey said. “And then word of the NCAA investigation surfaces for violations that occurred during Covid. In that way more than any other, I think Covid impacted ASU’s program because of the alleged misdeeds that took place during the pandemic.

“The program really hasn’t been the same since.”

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Men’s basketball

Mickey Mitchell can’t help but wonder what might have been. After sitting out the first eight games of the Sun Devils’ 2017-18 season due to the old transfer rules, he played in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and was eyeing a third with greater possibilities.

“When Covid shut us down, we were most likely going to be [a 9- or 10-seed] if the tournament started right then,” said Mitchell, now the program’s director of operations. ‘With that happening at the time that it did, it took a toll on everyone. It took a toll on coach. It took a toll on the players.

“It’s too bad because coach had a top-10 recruiting class coming in with [2021 No. 24 overall pick] Josh Christopher and Marcus Bagley. Remy was coming back. Alonzo Verge was coming back. Jalen House was coming back. They had an elite team, but Covid affected everything. Coach couldn’t coach how he normally coaches. He was wearing a mask, he couldn’t sit with his players, he couldn’t sit with his team and I’m sure he didn’t want to yell as much as he does because there’s no one in the crowd so you could hear everything.”

Hurley not being Hurley created its own issues, among them the loss of key players such as Romello White, who transferred to Mississippi in May 2020.

“He was our best inside player so not having the normal way of communicating almost on a daily basis with your team, I think impacted, potentially a decision like that,” Hurley said. “To lose him was tough going into that next year. All your roles and responsibilities change dramatically when you’re trying to manage that situation.

“Listen, I can’t blame everything on Covid. Part of it was roster construction and that’s on me to make sure that I put the right group of people together. That year we were in COVID and we were allowed to play, that team was supposed to be a team that got us over the hump and took the program to a different level, and it didn’t happen. When you’ve had multiple years where you’re in the tournament and you’re having success and then you can really take a giant step that you miss, it sets you back, but after Covid, yeah, it felt like starting over again.”

Hurley is hoping that the No. 4 ranked recruiting class in the nation finally has the Sun Devils back on track.

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Women’s basketball

To nobody’s surprise, Charlie Turner Thorne had it rolling again. After taking a sabbatical in the 2011-12 season, the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame inductee had the Sun Devils preparing to make their school record seventh straight trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2020.

Despite an early exit from the Pac-12 Tournament due to minor injuries to a pair of point guards, Turner Thorne was eyeing a sixth career Sweet Sixteen with a senior laden team.

“We beat the No. 2 and No. 3 teams (Oregon and Oregon State) in the nation in the same weekend so we knew how good we could be when we were at full strength,” Turner Thorne said. “We were fired up because we knew we had this really experienced team and you just know when you have a special team that’s good enough for a deep run.

Turner Thorne was at the airport on her way home after a visit with recruit Meg Newman when she heard about the NBA canceling its season.

“The dominoes were starting to fall and I’m just kind of getting this little pit in my stomach,” Turner Thorne said. “Literally as we’re landing from Indianapolis to Houston for another visit, my phone is just blowing up, ‘Ding, ding, ding, ding,’ and it was all these text messages about the tournament getting canceled.

“Our seniors were just devastated. They were heartbroken. The Tournament is what you play for. It’s the culmination of everything and they didn’t get it. We were probably going to be a 6-seed again so you just felt so horribly for them.”

Unable to lead his swimmers through daily practices, Sun Devils swim coach Bob Bowman elected to redshirt everyone and take the 2020-21 season off.

“I was like, ‘Can I do that?'” Turner Thorne said, laughing. “I said that out loud and I really meant it. We had no fans at games, we were not able to prepare, we had all these babies coming in that didn’t have a frickin’ clue about anything so I knew it was gonna be rough. We had an NIT year, which was fine, and I was proud of that group. I just tried to have a ton of grace and bring them meals all the time and just try to do stuff so they could have some semblance of a college experience.”

Ultimately, Covid robbed the Sun Devils women’s basketball team of its greatest asset: Turner Thorne. After the 2021-22 season, she retired.

“If I’m being honest, I think it did take a lot out of me,” she said. “When I came back after the time off, I thought I’d probably do another five to 10 years. We had it rolling again and it was fun, but that year where we were going to make the deep run — that could have been a good year to just be like, ‘Okay, I’m good. It’s time to leave.’

“There’s never really a good time to leave, but when the pandemic hit, I did feel an obligation to see the program through it. I wouldn’t say my retirement was necessarily pandemic driven, but it was fatigue driven so I guess in some ways it was. For me, it was never about, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get to a Final Four.’ I just wanted to hand the program over in good shape.”

An NCAA Tournament staple under Turner Thorne, ASU has not been back to the Tournament since 2019.

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baseball

Few coaches in Sun Devil Athletics feel the weight of expectations more than the baseball coach. Some fans still maintain the unrealistic expectations of a bygone era in which Jim Brock led ASU to Omaha 13 times, to the finals 10 times, and combined with Bobby Winkles on ASU’s five national titles — all between 1965 and 1981.

Pat Murphy felt those expectations for 15 years. Tim Esmay felt them briefly, and when Tracy Smith oversaw back-to-back losing seasons for the first time in program history (2017, 2018), Sun Devil nation nearly revolted.

With Torkelson leading the offense, one of the best infields in college baseball, RJ Dabovich looking like one of the best closers in the nation, and five players selected in the first four rounds of MLB Draft for the first time in program history, Smith had a chance to change fans’ minds in 2020.

ASU was ranked in the Top-10 in every major media poll while opening the season 13-4. Covid cut off any further possibilities.

“I felt like that was an Omaha caliber team,” Smith said. “A lot of things have to go your way to get there, but I think from a personnel standpoint, and as it played out with the draft, that was a really good team that never really got recognized for their accomplishment.

“And from a personal standpoint, it was problematic. I didn’t get to correct some of the ’17 and ’18 stuff that was a little bit out of control.”

Despite the disappointment, Smith instilled a healthy perspective in the program.

“What I really appreciated is that the players, coaches, everybody was able to take a collective step back and say, ‘We’re bummed we didn’t get to play baseball, but relative to some of the things that were going on in the country and globally, a college baseball season kind of seemed a little bit insignificant at that point,'” Smith said. “That’s why I guess it hurt all that much more that there was never a recognition of that particular group, or even an acknowledgement from our administration.”

Smith appeared on his way to more than just a one-year correction, however. The Sun Devils had turned a corner in recruiting.

“Any time you take over a program — and I’m sure [current ASU coach] Willie [Bloomquist] is going through the same thing right now — there’s an adjustment until it’s your fingerprints and your program,” Smith said. “That involves full recruiting cycles. You couldn’t flip your roster back then like you can now in a one-year timeframe.

“We were loaded on the recruiting piece of it. We had recruiting classes coming where we felt like we would have been set up for a lot of success.”

Smith never got to see it through. Anderson fired him after a 33-22 season in 2021. The staff was disbanded and many of those top recruits decommitted and went to other programs including outfielder Dante Nori, a top-20 prospect for the 2024 MLB Draft, and pitcher Matt Champion.

“I don’t even think Ray Anderson knew what he did on that day,” Smith said. “He made a choice for whatever reason, but I do think it set that place back a little bit for sure.”

Smith knew he was on thin ice because his relationship with Anderson had deteriorated.

“The day that I got fired, I wasn’t surprised, because even in the regional, we walked off somebody on that Friday night, and I didn’t hear from anybody,” Smith said. “There was no congratulations. No nothing. But I got a text from administration as I was walking to the bus after our last loss about a meeting on Monday.

“You could tell the vibe because we would meet weekly. After the 2019 season, I was thinking I was getting an extension, which is what we had agreed upon, and he didn’t do it so we got into it pretty heavily at that point. He made the comment, ‘Well, we’ll wait until next year and we’ll reevaluate then and I was like, ‘Fine,’ because I knew what we had coming back in 2020.”

Smith said Anderson initially offered him a one-year extension at which Smith balked because it created the appearance of a lame-duck coach for recruiting purposes. Anderson eventually offered a two-year extension but Smith said he didn’t want to announce it publicly.

“I’ll never forget when we were in the regional in 2021 and an article came out where he denied giving me an extension,” Smith said. “I remember I said to my wife at the time, ‘Go to bed tonight, knowing that we’re fired because Ray Anderson is publicly denying that he gave me an extension when he actually gave me one.'”

Smith has coached the past two seasons at Michigan. The ASU baseball team missed the NCAA Tournament for the third straight year in 2024, marking the first time that has happened since the Sun Devils failed to earn a tournament berth in the first five seasons as a varsity program from 1959-63.

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Sun devilS Hockey

Nobody has a crazier Covid story than Sun Devils hockey coach Greg Powers. Because ASU was not in a conference when Covid arrived, and because other conferences opted to play only intra-conference games, the Devils had to play the entire 2020-21 season on the road in the Big Ten.

ASU had no chance in that environment. They were stuck in hotels all over the Midwest. They didn’t have access to their training facilities, and they played in hostile environments every night. It was a 180° turn from the previous season when ASU was crafting something special.

In 2019-20, ASU beat No. 4 Denver, No. 8 Clarkson and swept No. 9 Quinnipiac. For the second-straight season, Powers was named a finalist for the Spencer Penrose Award, which is awarded to the nation’s best coach. Powers knew this group was his best group to date, and he knew more help was on the way. Before that season ever started, Josh Doan, the son of Valley icon Shane Doan, had committed to play for the Sun Devils.

“In the preseason, we went to China and those additional five games really prepped our guys for a good year,” Powers said. “We were going into the tournament feeling really good. We were playing really good hockey with an older group, and we had a seven-game winning streak late in the season.”

Covid canceled that postseason, but one of the biggest hits to ASU’s future hopes came when top defenseman Josh Maniscalco opted to turn pro after that season. Maniscalco had planned to return, but with the 2020-21 season in doubt, he didn’t want to risk losing valuable development time.

“He really wanted to come back for his junior year and lead us back to the tournament,” Powers said. “He turned down four offers.

“He was our best player hands down. We even announced him as our captain. But the deeper we got into Covid, we didn’t know if we were gonna play so Josh had no choice but to sign an NHL deal. We didn’t have anything worked out with the Big Ten. We didn’t have anything worked out with the NCHC. It was late in the summer when we finally got a deal done with the Big Ten and the only way we could put our guys on the ice was to essentially live on the road for four months.”

Powers admits that the 2020-21 season, and the one that followed it while Covid protocols were still in effect, had a stalling effect on his program.

“It was just a really odd two-year period,” he said. “You just never felt like you could really settle in and make things feel normal because of all the issues we were facing with that and then the move into our new arena. I don’t want to say that the kids who came back for that fifth year resented it, but it’s tough when you see a beautiful new arena going up and you know you’re never going to play in it despite the fact that you helped build it, and build the program.

“I could make a lot of arguments as to why Covid stunted our growth more than anybody because of what we had to go through.”

Top photo via Getty Images: Former Sun Devils guard Remy Martin celebrates the Kansas Jayhawks’ NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship by cutting down the net after defeating the North Carolina Tar Heels in 2022.

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