Hurley emerges as strong coaching candidate
Buffalo coach Bobby Hurley has emerged as a leading candidate to replace Herb Sendek as Arizona State men’s basketball coach, azcentral sports has learned.
ASU has had interest in the former Duke point guard since the job first opened March 24, but the Sun Devils first pursued Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel. On Tuesday, a day after the Blue Devils won the national championship in Indianapolis, Capel withdrew as an ASU candidate.
Hurley, 43, likely would go over well in Tempe. In some ways he is college-basketball royalty. Not only does he have the Duke background (with two national championships), he’s the son of legendary high school coach Bob Hurley, Sr., so the profession is in his blood.
In two seasons at Buffalo, Hurley is 42-20, taking the Bulls to this season’s NCAA Tournament, where they lost to West Virginia by six in the opening round.
“I’m so happy for Bob,” former Duke star Grant Hill told azcentral sports at the Final Four. “I felt like he was kind of running from (coaching) for a while, but he’s in the family business. We never got a chance to see Bobby at the next level and I think because of that experience – and I’m just speculating; we haven’t talked about it, so I don’t know – but I always felt like he was kind of running from getting into basketball and coaching.
“But he has so much to offer. He can have such an impact on these young players, and he’s done that in a very short period of time. It’s been to watch. He was one of my favorite teammates of all time.”
Hurley is vacationing in Aruba, which could be holding up the process, but is expected to return soon. An open recruiting period starts Friday. According to a source, ASU had internal plans to introduce a coach this week, but that outing was canceled following the Capel news.
Capel on Wednesday told Duke beat reporters his decision to withdraw from ASU consideration simply came down to wanting to stay at Duke.
“It had nothing to do with anything else really,” Capel said. “There were a lot of amazing things about the potential opportunity out there. It’s more about feeling at home, feeling a comfort level here and not wanting to leave.”
More online
Paola Boivin sees ASU's need for improved facilities as a legitimate concern, but coaches at the Final Four still consider it a coveted position because it's a major program in a major conference, the Pac-12, in a popular area to live.
UCLA assistant David Grace is getting a strong push locally because of his local ties, his past success with top AAU programs and his strong West Coast recruiting connections.
Keep tabs with
for more of Boivin’s thoughts and complete coverage of ASU’s search.
Charles Barkley and Luis Gonzalez came to Arizona hopeful of finding a level of elite athletic success that eluded them elsewhere. Both found that and a home, perhaps for life.
Barkley and Gonzalez, two of the state’s more celebrated professional athletes, were among five inducted Wednesday into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame. It’s not the first HOF honor for either, but one that carries meaning because of the success they achieved here, Barkley with the Suns for four seasons and Gonzalez for eight with the Diamondbacks.
“When I came here in 1992, I didn’t know what to expect,” said Barkley, 52, whose NBA Most Valuable Player season was with the Suns in ’93. “Obviously I live here so it must be a special place. I tell people I can live anywhere in the world I want to, but there’s a reason I live here in Phoenix. It’s a really cool place to live, the people are amazing, the fans have always been supportive. I guess I was surprised I’m living here, but the fans and the city have been amazing.”
Barkley grew up in Alabama, played his first eight NBA seasons in Philadelphia and four more in Houston after leaving the Suns before beginning his television analyst career. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006 and is rated as one of the 50 greatest NBA players.
What means most to Barkley about the Arizona HOF is his induction in the same class with the late Cotton Fitzsimmons, who after his second of three stints as Suns coach became executive vice president and helped to put together a trade for Barkley.
“I knew Cotton before I was on Jerry (Colangelo’s) radar because of my trips with Nike,” Barkley said. “I had been going on vacation with Cotton for probably 10 years so I got to know him really well.”
Former Suns CEO/ chairman Colangelo and Fitzsimmons’ wife JoAnn represented Cotton, who died in 2004, at the 45th Hall of Fame ceremony in Scottsdale. Others in the induction class are golfer Danielle Ammaccapane and sports writer Joe Gilmartin.
Colangelo, in his second term of USA Basketball chairman, has ties with most of the inductees. He also was Diamondbacks CEO/chair- man from1998-2004, overlapping with most of Gonzalez’s Diamondbacks career.
“He’s been very influential in the whole sports community,” Gonzalez said. “For me, he was a big father figure. He brought me in here, believed in me especially a guy that was in the middle part of his career. They gave an opportunity to come in here and try to win a job and play hard. You never wanted to let anybody down. They stuck their neck out to come play here, and I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. That’s why I tried to go out there and overachieve every single day I played.”
Gonzalez, 47, was a five-time All-Star with the Diamondbacks, whom he works for now as a special assistant. He had the winning hit in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, to many the biggest sports moment in state history.
“After our first year of playing here, my wife and I decided this was going to be home for us,” Gonzalez, 47, said. “We look back at it now and count our blessings knowing this was a great decision for us to stay here. This is home for us, we raise our kids here, we love it here. You try to build a legacy on what you do and how you try to help people and