Photo Credit: Arizona Republic
Eleven seasons. Three NCAA Tournament appearances. And one absolutely brutal final exit.
Bobby Hurley’s time as Arizona State’s head men’s basketball coach is officially over, with athletic director Graham Rossini announcing that Hurley’s contract would not be renewed just hours after the Sun Devils’ blowout 91-42 loss to No. 7 Iowa State in the Big 12 tournament. It was a fitting, if painful, punctuation mark on a tenure that always felt like it was one big run away from something special… and never quite got there.
To be fair, there were genuine highs. A two-time national champion at Duke and the NCAA’s all-time assists leader, Hurley led ASU to the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons in 2018 and 2019, a first for the program since 1980-81, and pulled off a stunning win at Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse in 2017 as part of a 12-0 start that pushed the Sun Devils to No. 3 in the AP Top 25, matching the highest ranking in program history. For a moment, it felt like Hurley was genuinely building something in Tempe.
Then came COVID, and things were never quite the same. The Sun Devils have struggled to regain their footing since, reaching the NCAA Tournament in 2023 but finishing with a losing record in four of the remaining seasons. Fan interest cratered to the point where, at the January rivalry game against Arizona, there appeared to be more UA fans inside Desert Financial Arena than ASU’s own supporters. Hurley himself acknowledged the disconnect: “We had this place cooking before COVID. Now it’s a sterile environment.”
This season had flickers of promise: a runner-up finish at the Maui Invitational and upsets over ranked Kansas State, Cincinnati, and a final home win over No. 14 Kansas, but it wasn’t enough to mask a 7-11 conference record and a program that felt increasingly adrift.
And then came Kansas City. A 91-42 demolition at the hands of Iowa State, a staggering 49-point margin, was the kind of ending you simply can’t recover from. There was no spinning that box score.
Hurley leaves as the second-winningest coach in program history with a 185-167 record. He gave Tempe over a decade of effort and his family put down roots in the community. But ASU basketball needed a new spark. Now comes the hard part…finding one.