Point guard Moe Odum at the center of universe for international-laden ASU men’s basketball team

TEMPE — There’s an air of mystery with this Arizona State men’s basketball team, largely because of how new and international its players are.

Trevor Best is the only returning scholarship player, and as Bobby Hurley noted, he’s still picking up the system because he was a mid-year addition who made his team debut in January.

There’s also the elephant in the room of Hurley coaching in the final year of his contract, but he considers himself like much of the group in that sense.

“We have a number of guys that have one year left and gotta make it work, myself included,” Hurley said in June. “I shifted just my narrative and the vision and what I was trying to portray to everybody. My back’s against the wall. I’ve loved my time at Arizona State and I value that greatly.”

He appears to have found a good match to lead the charge for what could be his final year leading the program in point guard Moe Odum, whose 7.3 assists per game last season at Pepperdine ranked fourth nationally.

“It’s still a big work in progress to see what it all ultimately will look like, but in the meantime, the vision is Moe Odum’s going to have the ball a lot, making a lot of decisions for us,” Hurley said Thursday. “I think we got a good number of guys that could get some things done around the basket and we got some guys that could make shots.”

Asked if Odum reminds him of himself, Hurley instead went in the direction of one of his former players, Tra Holder.

“Tra was a better scorer and (Odum’s) a better passer, but the same ability just to get in the paint, kind of whenever they want,” Hurley said.

Odum was clearly the vocal leader of the group in the limited practice viewing window on Thursday, making sure players were in the right spot and letting them hear about it when they were not.

“Just being new to the team, 14 new players … just trying to come in, bring that culture, build the bond with my teammates,” Odum said. “We go eat, we do activities.

“We only get not even a year, six, seven months to change around the team. So we’re trying to really just connect as a team off the court, so on the court we could just move as one together.”

Heavy international presence on 2025-26 Arizona State men’s basketball team

Hurley said he’s never gone the international route of roster building quite to the extent he did for this year’s squad, making the argument international players were “less expensive than American players.”

Seven of the team’s 15 scholarship players were born outside the country, and five of those seven were playing professionally overseas before they were recruited by Hurley, including 7-foot-1 centers Massamba Diop (Senegal) and Dame Salane (Italy) as well as Andrija Grbovic (Montenegro), Jovan Icitovic (Serbia) and Noah Meeusen (Belgium).

The other two — Allen Mukeba (Belgium) and Santiago Trouet (Argentina) — had already joined the college ranks at Oakland and San Diego in 2024, respectively.

Hurley said his top priority in searching for talent overseas was age and experience against top competition, something he found especially with Diop and Grbovic, who were playing in Spain’s ACB and the Adriatic League, both arguably top-five leagues globally.

He’s also noticed a better feel for the game among the players growing up within the European development system, rather than what he’s used to from the American one.

“They don’t make stupid plays very often,” Hurley said. “These guys know how to move the ball, they can make shots. I think our front court could really shoot the ball. There isn’t a guy on the front court that I might not allow to shoot a 3 this year because they’ve all kind of proven in practice they could do that.

“The biggest adjustment is just pace of play. The American game is faster.”

Hurley said he expects the team to improve greatly over the first few months.

Preseason injuries that ended Vijay Wallace’s season before it started, will stall Meeusen’s debut for a few weeks (ankle) and that may leave Allen Mukeba and Marcus Adams Jr. on minutes restrictions were factors in that thinking, as was Meeusen and Icitovic arriving later in the summer.

ASU will tip off its season on Tuesday when it hosts Southern Utah at 7 p.m. MST on ESPN 620, 98.7 FM HD-2 and the Arizona Sports app.

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