Bobby Hurley: ASU’s Remy Martin will ‘lead our program into the future’

With ASU basketball losing three senior leaders to graduation, head coach Bobby Hurley is ready for freshman guard Remy Martin to take on a larger role next season.

“I’m going to hand him the ball and he’s going to lead our program into the future,” Hurley said Friday on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station’s Doug & Wolf.

Martin provided a spark with his tenacity and defense as he came off the bench this season behind Tra Holder and Shannon Evans II.

“Remy, his coach will tell you, just on the court (is) fierce,” former ASU basketball player and now Sun Devil color analyst Kyle Dodd said.

The fierce play was the spark ASU needed, as Martin had 10 or more points in 20 games this year.

The most evident game of Martin’s importance to the team came during his 21-point and five-steal performance in the Sun Devils’ win over then-ranked No. 2 Kansas.

Martin was named the Pac-12 Co-Sixth Man of the Year, averaging 9.6 points,  3 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game.

Even though the team’s leaders of Holder, Evans and Kodi Justice all played their final collegiate basketball games, Hurley is confident in Martin and other young players to keep the program going in the right direction.

“I think the sneaky undervalued thing with us this year is people look to us like a veteran team but really we only had the three senior guards that were all key members to what we’re doing but everyone else was pretty inexperienced,” Hurley said. “These guys are going to get a tremendous amount of experience from this season.”

Hurley believes that players along side Martin such as Romello White, De’Quon Lake, Mickey Mitchell and Kimani Lawrence will have better seasons next year because of the experience gained from this season.

Along with the returners, Hurley is excited about transfers Zylan Cheatman and Rob Edwards who will be eligible for the Sun Devils next season.

The Sun Devils’ success this season attracted recruits leaving the team with a top recruiting class in the country and a bright future.

“We became like the cool school,” Hurley said. “We had a free flowing style. We scored a lot of points, it opened doors for us to talk to kids that we normally may not have been able to talk to up to this point.”

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