ASU coach Hurley: Need faster starts, more contributions

The way the Arizona State Sun Devils played during the non-conference portion of the schedule was encouraging.

First-year coach Bobby Hurley had guided the team to a 10-3 record, with some good wins over North Carolina State, Creighton, Texas A&M and UNLV with a couple of “quality” losses to Marquette and Kentucky.

The Devils’ success led to high hopes entering Pac-12 play, though the optimism has dissipated as the team has won just one of its first seven conference games.

Not long ago it seemed as though ASU could make a return to the NCAA Tournament this season while competing for a Pac-12 championship, but now, that’s beginning to seem like a bit of a long shot. A guest of Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Wednesday, Hurley said he and the team are not focusing on things that far ahead.

“We’ve tried a number of things and to this point we’ve been knocking on the door, we just haven’t broke through,” he said. “We’ve been in a lot of close games, some heartbreaking losses. We’re not in a position that we thought we would be in at this point based on how we competed in the non-conference, and that’s a part of the source of the frustration.

“I understand this is a process and building a program in my first year, but just for the veteran players we were well-positioned for that. Now, in three weeks’ time, really, we’ve removed ourselves from that temporarily.”

Hurley noted there are still plenty of games remaining on the schedule meaning there is time to turn things around.

“We have to look at it…just one game at a time and try to win each game that we’re trying to play,” he said.

As Hurley alluded to, the Sun Devils have been competitive most nights, with just two of their six losses coming by more than seven points. But unfortunately, all losses count the same in the standings, and the team’s habit of getting off to slow starts in games has done little to help their cause.

Furious comebacks and rallies are nice; not needing them is even better.

“I’ve thought about warm-ups, I’ve thought about everything,” Hurley said of how he’s trying to fix that issue. “We have a structure, routine that has worked in other places I’ve been in preparing our players the best possible way, and I’m looking at my pregame speeches. I’m trying to figure any reasons that I can come up with as to why we put ourselves in a hole early in the game.

“We watched a lot of film with the players and we’ve shown them the types of shots that we’re not converting early in games and our opponents are shooting the ball at a really high level right now. We have to change it.”

One thing Hurley is not ready to do is mess with the starting lineup, which lately has included Tra Holder, Gerry Blakes, Obinna Oleka, Willie Atwood and Eric Jacobsen. It’s a different group than has been featured at other times during the season.

“When we finished the non-conference Savon Goodman was a big part of that, he was our leading scorer and rebounder and he went out of the lineup for several games,” he said. “From there we’ve been juggling different starting lineups. I feel comfortable with the group that I’ve been starting the last couple of games.”

The coach said his team needs to get contributions from more players on the roster, because most games there are just a couple different guys playing well at a time.

“That’s not good enough at this level, and especially this year in the Pac-12 with as competitive as it is.”

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