ASU injuries forced Bobby Hurley on scout team ahead of Oregon loss

Arizona State head basketball coach Bobby Hurley raved about his team entering Thursday night’s 75-64 loss to the Oregon Ducks.

Looking to extend their winning streak to three games and on the up-and-up, the Sun Devils turned in the best 40 minutes of practice the head coach had seen all season on Wednesday. The team’s confidence and resiliency was on full display.

Finally, things looked to be turning the corner in favor of a Sun Devils team that has had one of the rockiest seasons in the NCAA.

But not everything was how it seemed, as ASU wasn’t able to get out of the practice gym unscathed.

“That 40 minutes was outstanding and then the last like six minutes, and we were just kinda winding down the live portion as to what we were doing, that’s when Josh [Christopher] was kicked in the leg,” Hurley said after Thursday’s game against Oregon. “He left and I never saw him.

“About two minutes later Chris Osten went down with the ankle. And then about two minutes later it was Marcus [Bagley]. It was like bang, bang, bang and those guys were out. We couldn’t do anything else.”

The injuries couldn’t have come at worse time, as ASU still hadn’t worked on combatting Oregon’s three-quarter pressure, leaving Hurley and some of his coaching staff to fill in as members of the scout team.

“I don’t think that that’s going to really get us ready to go against something they do very well,” Hurley said. “That’s the situation we were thrusted in.”

While Bagley and Osten, two important pieces to the team, were forced out of action the next day against the Ducks, Christopher managed to make his 15th start of the season after being a game-time decision.

It would be a short outing for the freshman guard, however, who made a spectacular dunk-saving block at the rim early on in the first half but paid a price, crashing down hard on the court.

After an ASU turnover, Josh Christopher put together a great effort to stay with the play and got an emphatic rejection off the glass. pic.twitter.com/EENPXS1OMz

— SunDevilSource.com (@SunDevilSource) February 12, 2021

After getting tended to by a trainer, Christopher would return in the first half but sat out the final 20 minutes with a back injury. It marked the first game in his ASU career where the guard did not record a point.

“Josh, when he had that great block and landed, he was not right after that,” Hurley said. “He already came into the game with a bruise in his lower leg. He was not moving very [well] to start the second half so we thought it was the best thing to shut him down. Tough night in that regard.”

With Christopher, Bagley and Osten on the shelf, plus junior forward Taeshon Cherry’s absence from the team, ASU had just seven players on scholarship available for the majority of Thursday’s game. That left Hurley to turn to walk-on John Olmsted. The sophomore from Morenci, Ariz., recorded the first points of his career and added two rebounds in 10 minutes of play.

The injuries add to a grocery list of issues the Sun Devils have faced all season. They’ll look to right the ship Sunday afternoon at 5 p.m. against the Oregon State Beavers. Tune to ESPN 620 AM for all the action.

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