ASU men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley searches for answers to a disappointing season that started with high expectations amid a six-game losing streak. (Photo by Spencer Barnes/Cronkite News)
TEMPE – When the final buzzer sounded in a nearly empty Desert Financial Arena, the Big 12 conference basketball mountain seemed like a peak too high for Arizona State to ever climb.
Coach Kelvin Sampson’s No. 5 Houston Cougars throttled the Sun Devils 80-65 Tuesday. The loss marked coach Bobby Hurley and Co.’s seventh straight home loss, good for the second worst in program history since Desert Financial Arena opened in 1974.
Meanwhile, the Cougars, who joined the Big 12 from the American Athletic Conference a season before ASU, are in the midst of a 12-game road win streak, with the win over ASU setting a new conference record. Sampson and his players take nothing for granted.
“To be able to do that, you’ve got to have tough kids, talented kids, mentally tough kids,” Sampson said. “You think about all the places that we play and how many great programs there are in the Big 12 … it’s hard to win one, it’s hard to win two … so hats off to these kids and our staff.”
The disparity between the two programs was clear on the basketball court but also off of it. Following another home loss to TCU over the weekend, Hurley spoke as honestly as he has the entire season.
“My players didn’t even want me to talk to them after the game. ‘What do you want me to say at this point?’ is some of the comments I got from my own players,” Hurley said Saturday.
It was the latest bizarre moment in a series of strange events for the program. With young players and a clear gap in team leadership, Hurley missed the opportunity to assert himself. Instead, he offered truth in a time when transparency might’ve been an option best saved for the end of the season.
“There’s no guarantees in this thing. We had our chances and we didn’t cash in,” Hurley said Tuesday after the Houston loss. “There was not a lot that we could do in this game tonight to have a legitimate chance of beating this team and that’s just the reality of what I felt so I didn’t think it needed a lot of commentary after the game.”
Sampson used the game to rebuild the confidence of junior guard Emanuel Sharp after he went scoreless in Houston’s win over Arizona just three nights before.
“I saw (Arizona State’s) press as an opportunity to get (Sharp) going a little bit. Our best team is when Emanuel is playing well,” Sampson said. “There’s not a player in America that doesn’t have an injury at some point and sometimes an injury can throw your game off a little bit and he’s been off a little bit.
“He’s a winner … he’s that guy. He was probably pressing a little bit but that’s alright, Steph Curry presses when things don’t go right for him … there’s never nothing wrong with our kids if they go through something … it means they’re human. Every player goes through something, especially over the course of 30 plus games.”
Sharp finished with 17 points and torched Hurley’s trademark full-court pressure in the second half.
Continuity within the program has been an issue for several years in Tempe. On the other hand, Houston and Sampson created a culture that fosters players when they are young and develops them into elite basketball players over time. Graduate forward J’Wan Roberts is the prime example.
“(Roberts) wasn’t a very highly recruited kid but when he leaves the University of Houston, he’s going to be the winningest player in the history of that school,” Sampson said.
Sampson joked that Roberts was a 2-star recruit out of high school, and Roberts said Houston was the only school he visited. Under Sampson’s tutelage, Roberts went from role player to crucial cog in the machine that is Cougar basketball. He committed and bought into the philosophy of Sampson.
The lack of culture within ASU’s program hasn’t allowed for stories like Roberts to occur in Tempe. Houston is an outlier in the modern landscape of college basketball due to the transfer portal, but Arizona State’s lack of returning players over the last three seasons has shown no signs of stopping, especially after the commitment to chase younger high-profile players out of high school.
“In the last 10 years in our top 10 players, we’ve had three kids transfer in 10 years,” Sampson said. “We have four starters back in an era where everyone’s transferring … that says a lot about how we evaluate and how we recruit.”
Hurley returned zero starters after the 2023-24 season and only one regular starter, Frankie Collins, the season prior.
Hurley showed nothing but respect toward Sampson and his players but conceded that he never truly felt the Sun Devils had a chance in the game. Houston’s physicality overwhelmed some of ASU’s younger players.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘manhandled,’ but they have a bunch of grown men and they really get after it on defense,” Hurley said. “They were all super engaged when I came out about an hour before … a lot of coaches throw around words like culture and identity as cliches and stuff, but they have it.”
Hurley, clad in a sweatshirt that read “Guard U” during the game, spent tremendous energy accosting the officiating crew during the first half before timeouts rather than rallying his troops.
The “Guard U”’ moniker became a relic of Hurley’s early tenure in Tempe, when it appeared as though ASU would become a factory for rising stars at the guard position. Instead, the program has failed to produce a steady pipeline of successful guards, particularly at the next level. The last Sun Devil guard and player to be drafted to the NBA was Josh Christopher in 2021. If “Guard U”truly is the program’s culture, it hasn’t been one of consistent success.
Houston avoids flashy nicknames and instead produces quality basketball players. Since 2021, the Cougars produced four draft picks including a lottery pick in Jarace Walker in 2023.
“We have a model that we’ve been able to sustain over a long period of time regardless of who’s here,” Sampson said. “We’ve always had talented teams but our kids have great value in being a Houston Cougar. It means something to them.”
While he’s found tremendous success at Houston over the last few seasons, Sampson is not unfamiliar with the experience Hurley and those closest to him.
“I hate to see it because I’ve been there. We all have,” Sampson said. “I coached a team at Washington State that lost 18 in a row … it affects every part of your life. I don’t know (Hurley’s) wife but it gnaws at her, it gnaws at his children. It’s amazing how people use that as a game. It’s not funny.”
Sampson’s career stretches back to 1981, when he coached at Montana Tech. He’s seen everything there is to see in the college basketball world. He’s survived multiple evolutionary stages of the sport. His word goes a long way in coaching circles.
The program in Tempe is at a crossroads and facing yet another identity crisis entering Sunday’s game at Kansas State. Likely looking at a bottom-three Big 12 finish, the season looks like a failure in many ways. And the questions from the offseason remain about whether a culture truly exists within the program.
