College basketball hot seat: Arizona State’s most recent loss puts Bobby Hurley in jeopardy

The Sun Devils lost another game in brutal fashion on Tuesday when they fell 71-70 to Kansas State. Freshman phenom went to the free throw line with four seconds left and two shots – as easy a chance as you’ll get to tie and win the game – and he missed both attempts.

It was a heartbreaking way to lose, but also extremely on brand for Bobby Hurley’s squad. Arizona State’s 70.3% free throw percentage ranks 231st in the nation. The embarrassing part is that figure is actually a good number for this team: they’ve consistently shot around 67% from the charity stripe under Hurley, just twice finishing above 70% and never higher than 75%.

This was a game in which Hurley’s team showed a complete inability to win at the fundamentals of basketball, something that’s been a recurring theme. They jumped out to a 15-0 run to start the game, but trailed by halftime. Blown leads has been an all-too-common refrain this season.

Kansas State also finished with nearly twice as many points in the paint and fastbreak points, a direct result of the Sun Devils – who are only shooting 35.6% from three on the season – attempting a whopping 37 three pointers in this game.

And for the third time this year, and the second game in a row, Arizona State saw one of their players get ejected. Guard Adam Miller was assessed a flagrant 2 foul and kicked out of the game during a break, apparently slapping a Kansas State player.

In the Sun Devils’ last game, wing BJ Freeman was ejected in the final minutes of the team’s loss to rival Arizona for head-butting an opponent. Hurley then opted to send all of his players to the locker room before shaking hands with Arizona, accusing the Wildcats players of being classless in his postgame press conference and seemingly justifying the head-butt.

Herein lies the biggest problem: Hurley seems to have no control over his team. In consecutive games, he’s seen players physically strike other players and get ejected for it, and Hurley has simply chalked it up to “the emotion of the game.”

Beyond that, though, this team is just undisciplined. They clearly think it’s okay to get overly physical with their opponent, but they also exhibit poor shot selection time and time again, turn the ball over at will, miss free throws left and right, and have become masters of blowing early leads in games.

This might be excusable behavior for a new coach still trying to instill the right culture, but Hurley is coaching in his 10th season with the Sun Devils and his 12th overall as a head coach. He’s also working with his most talented roster by far, yet the same issues that have plagued previous Hurley teams – stagnant offensive schemes, fundamentally unsound, streaky play in general – still persist.

Hurley peaked back in the late 2010’s, when he ripped off three straight 20+ win seasons and, were it not for the NCAA tournament being canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, would have been the first coach in program history to make the dance in three straight seasons.

Since then, though? Three losing seasons, one 20+ win season that resulted in a tourney appearance – they won in the First Four but, surprise, blew a late lead to now-conference foe TCU – and little hope to restore the glory days of the early Hurley era.

This most recent loss, a microcosm of the issues that have plagyed Hurley, drops the Sun Devils to 12-10 and 3-8 in the Big 12. Two of their conference victories have come against the same team, Colorado, which remains winless in Big 12 play. Only one other team (Cincinnati) has a worse conference record and Arizona State fell to them last month.

The Sun Devils only have nine games left before the conference tournament starts, and four of them are against currently ranked teams while two more are against teams they’ve already lost to once before. It’s hard to envision this team getting past 14 wins, which remains the lowest win total of any season under Hurley in Tempe.

Simply put, the Sun Devils need a new voice leading their basketball program. New athletic director Graham Rossini has yet to make any coaching change, but this one is an easy decision after the recent string of horrible basketball.