Arizona State AD Graham Rossini will soon have to make first big decision on Bobby Hurley’s future

The initial fan reaction to Graham Rossini’s promotion to director of athletics for Arizona State was not great. Fans wanted an outside hire, someone completely unconnected to outgoing athletics director Ray Anderson, for starters.

On top of that, Rossini had been the administrator for Sun Devil baseball the last few years, and the team hasn’t finished better than fifth in the conference during his time in that role. Rossini’s background is also exclusively in baseball, having worked 13 seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and many wanted someone who could be more hands-on with football.

Rossini has quickly endeared himself to fans, though. His passion in speaking about his alma mater, coupled with the football team’s meteoric rise in their first year in the Big 12, has earned Rossini plenty of good grace.

That said, the new athletics director is about to be faced with his first real test: handling Bobby Hurley.

Like football, Arizona State basketball is in its first season in the Big 12, though the road is much tougher. Considered by many to be the top basketball conference in the nation, the Big 12 is filled with blue blood programs, and the Sun Devils knew they’d face a tall task to compete in it.

To his credit, Hurley did a fantastic job in acquiring talent for such a task. The coach landed three different 4-star transfers in Alston Mason, BJ Freeman, and Basheer Jihad while also securing commitments from 4-stars Amier Ali and Joson Sanon, as well as 5-star Jayden Quaintance.

It was easily the best recruiting class Hurley had put together in his 10 seasons in Tempe, which is impressive considering that Hurley has been one of the top recruiters in college basketball over the past decade.

Hurley has never had an issue with recruiting, but there have always been questions about his in-game coaching ability, often failing to capitalize on the talent he manages to bring in. But after such a strong class, and finishing the non-conference schedule with a 9-2 record – the only losses coming to powerhouses Gonzaga and Florida – many felt this was the breakthrough for Hurley.

Flash forward three weeks and Arizona State has stumbled out of the gate. Their latest loss to Cincinnati, their fourth in as many games, drops the Sun Devils to 1-5 in conference play. Worse is that all but one of those losses came against unranked teams.

Nobody expected Arizona State to come out and compete for the Big 12 title right away, but the expectations were surely higher than this. Cincinnati, UCF, and BYU all have a losing record in the Big 12 so far this year, and they all beat Arizona State rather easily.

Of course, Hurley’s team has shown signs of life, too. They led Kansas at halftime before getting blown out in the second half, and they staged a furious comeback to take Baylor to overtime before losing by six. Both of those performances constitute some promise, but the other losses cancel it all out.

Arizona State’s only conference win thus far is over Colorado, also in their first year in the Big 12. At 9-8 on the year and 0-6 in the conference, the Buffaloes have staked out an early lead as the worst team in the Big 12 this year.

That’s a rather uninspiring start to the year for the Sun Devils, who still haven’t faced off against the Big 12’s top teams, such as Iowa State, Houston, Texas Tech, and, of course, rival Arizona. If the Sun Devils can’t compete with the conference’s average teams, just imagine how their upcoming clashes with the conference titans will go.

All of this puts Rossini on a collision course with a very difficult decision. Hurley is incredibly likely to finish the year with a losing record, which would be his fifth in 10 years in Tempe. He’s had just three winning seasons in the conference over that time, and Arizona State has just one tournament appearance over the last five seasons.

On the other hand, Hurley’s recruiting efforts have remained strong. He just secured commitments from two highly-touted high school prospects, Fridrik Leo Curtis and Kash Polk, and the Sun Devils are firmly in the mix for Arizona native Koa Peat, a top 10 player in the nation.

It’s the Jekyll/Hyde nature of Hurley’s tenure that makes things so complicated. On one hand, no coach has ever been able to bring in talent to this program in the way Hurley has. But Hurley has also made a frustrating habit of not living up to the expectations he sets for himself. Then again, those expectations are only so high because of Hurley’s stellar recruiting.

Suppose that Hurley lands Peat, his second 5-star commit in as many years, but the Sun Devils finish with a losing record and once again miss out on an invite to any sort of tournament, even the NIT. Firing Hurley, who signed a contract extension just last year, would surely send all these talented players running for the transfer portal.

Keeping Hurley, though, would send a message that Arizona State is satisfied with being a perennial also-ran in basketball, which is a hard thing to admit even though the school doesn’t exactly have the best program history in the sport.