Hurley addresses ASU’s painful loss

Coach disappointed by crowd’s lack of support

Arizona State men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley knew watching film of his team’s 91-70 loss to Washington State was going to be painful.

But it was worse than even he thought.

He addressed the team’s issues quickly. The next opponent, Washington, has a four-game lead over a handful of teams, all tied for second with four losses.

The Sun Devils (15-7, 6-4) were out of sync from the start against Washington State and were manhandled by the team that came in 11th out of 12 teams and had yet to win a game on the road or on a neutral court.

“The truth is we have a lot of things to fix and a short time to do it,” Hurley said, during an impromptu gathering of handful of reporters Friday afternoon.

Asked if he got much sleep, Hurley replied:

“A little. The worse part was waking up because then you have to deal with the reality.”

The loss was a significant blow to ASU’s postseason tournament hopes. Most thought Hurley’s team would be in as long as it beat the teams it was supposed to beat and took care of the home court. Now it’s a crap-shoot the remaining games looming even larger.

Losing home games to Princeton, Utah and Washington State are serious flaws on a playoff resume.

After Saturday’s game against the Huskies (19-4, 10-0), the Sun Devils wrap up the regular season with five of seven games on the road where they are just 3-3 overall and 5-4 including neutral court games.

So the suddenly-reeling Sun Devils now have the chore of beating a team that has won 12 straight games, leads the conference and plays a solid 2-3 zone defense.

The best way to deal with a foe that plays a zone defense is to hit shots from the perimeter and the Sun Devils haven’t proven they can do that on a consistent basis. They are shooting just 33 percent from long distance. Complicating matters is that one of the team’s two best shooters, Taeshon Cherry (concussion), will not play.

Washington just missed cracking the top 25 this week, finishing as the top team in the receiving votes category. Hurley thinks the Huskies should be ranked but are being penalized for the conference’s lackluster showing, before league play started.

“I think it’s the whole narrative that the league isn’t any good,” he said. “Everyone’s been saying. It just spreads like wildfire to everywhere and then everyone gets thrown into the same pool. (It’s) not fair. I mean, their losses have been very close.”

Hurley took the blame for not getting his team to play with a better sense of urgency, no matter who the opponent and said he should have been harder on his team even when it was playing well to maintain that “edge.”

He has praised the home crowd on previous occasions but was also disappointed at the lack of support he saw Thursday night, especially given that his squad had won four of its previous five and was coming off the win over rival Arizona.

The Sun Devils drew 4,010 students to the Arizona game but just 974 Thursday night on the same night of the week.

“I thought it was a dreadful environment and our players played exactly the way the crowd performed,” he said. “We have a lot of students and it was packed for the Arizona game on a Thursday night. There are so many students here there have to be enough to get more than 700. Very low response to a team that is having a winning season, a successful season, a team that is position to go to the postseason. It’s important to have a good crowd and have a crowd that is behind you when you’re doing well.”

Hurley added that sophomore forward Romello White is “day to day” after leaving Thursday’s game with a knee injury. An MRI was negative and he was a “limited” participant in Fridays practice. White (8.9 ppg, 5.6 rpg) is one of two Sun Devils who have started every game. The other is senior forward Zylan Cheatham (11.6 ppg, 11.1 rpg).