Arizona State Men’s Basketball Head Coach Bobby Hurley
On his demeanor…
“We were in a heated moment following the loss against Washington. I think DJ played 17 minutes, not his normal role. He’s struggled for about two and half games now so I think that was a contributing factor to it. He has certain standards of his performance, you couple that with a few losses, not playing up to his standards, you’re going to get emotional. He lost his cool after the game, so it was a situation we handled the best way we could. We needed to do what we did, so the action we took was appropriate. DJ and I have been fine since. We met twice since we got back and talked about a lot of things. I anticipate there being no issues moving forward with DJ.”
On the difficulty of handling situations like that…
“It’s apart of our job. I’m an old school guy, I was coached very hard. I’ve changed my coaching style, I’m nowhere near as demanding in terms of verbally talking to players like I was 10 years ago in Buffalo. It’s a different age and you have to adjust and adapt on how you communicate with your players. We have a very healthy environment with how we coach the guys and I think the guys enjoy being in the program.”
On in-game frustration…
“When you go through a stretch like this, it’s going to challenge you. If you’re not having some frustration and not saying some tough things to your teammates, just accepting failure and defeat, then why are we in this business? These kids should be aggravated and frustrated. They should be able to communicate with each other and sometimes, in not the nicest way. The world we live in is hyper stressful and there’s a lot on the line for all these kids personally and collectively. We’ve done too much already this year to see that go up in flames. I’m happy that there was some conflict, and that there is conflict. That shows me that people care.”
On if approach this week in practice was similar to last week…
“In its simplest form, we’re not defending. We could talk about the offense too because we didn't make shots at Washington, shot 29% and still got to overtime with all that going on. Washington State we just didn’t guard the three point line again. They’re very good at it, they make nine a game, but they made 14, so if we’re an above average defense, we should hold them to at least their average or less instead of allowing that many more threes made. We watched all of those examples, we did a little more film study trying to understand why guys are getting cleaner looks. Just focus on our defense. I’m not going to go into all the details that we discussed and shared because that’s internal, about what we need to fix and how we need to fix it. The other thing is we have to stop getting behind in games because we have to scramble and exert a lot of energy pressing, trapping, running around and getting matched up right because we’re digging a hole for ourselves. Hopefully getting off toa better start will allow us to sit down and guard someone in the half court without having to run around and trap the whole game.”
On turning negative emotions into positive…
“You have to get up off the mat. We live in a world of great highs and low lows. We’re not the only program in the country that might have gotten off to a great, fantastic start and then hit a bad patch in the middle or some point in the season. It’s all different times, different parts of the season that you experience these types of situations. You would hope that maybe we could have played a little better in the first two minutes of overtime in Washington, maybe that would have stopped the bleeding. Then we could have found our winning ways again and unfortunately it didn’t happen. We have another opportunity this week and so, how do we handle failure? We’ve been tested right now and this is obviously a big week for us. It’ll be interesting to see how we collectively respond tomorrow night.”
On being prepared for ups and downs…
“I was just in DFA staring up at the rafters and I wasn’t seeing man banners up there. Historically, that hasn’t happened. I’m fighting for it, I’m going after it. I think it’s too early to judge how we’re going to finish the rest of the season. We went to 15-3, feeling like we were getting close to the top of the mountain to 15-7 now. We’ll see what happens over the last nine games before we judge how we finished the season here but I will say there were a couple years that we finished extremely strong including last year and the COVID year that they canceled the season. It’s hard to say, ‘this is how we do it here’ so I’m not really going to go into that.”
On Austin Nunez…
“We have won a lot of games with the group that started. DJ, we had his thing and it’s over. He’ll be back in the lineup and that’s where we’re going. Austin has had a great season. He’s exceeded expectations for what a freshman is doing at this level. There aren’t many, huge impact guys in our league - we’re going to be playing against one on Thursday in Pope, who’s had a great year at Oregon State - but certainly, as I talk with Austin, certainly a chance for his role to continue to expand and grow because he’s being very productive and plays both ends of the floor. I’ve had great sixth men like Remi [Martin] or Alonzo [Verge] in that role and maybe minutes will increase. We’ll have to see game-to-game how guys are performing.”
On this week's games…
“I think you nailed it with ‘every game is different.’ We struggled to win that game. They played very well, they have some good young players and are going to do some things to test our defense. They are a little bit unique with their forwards being able to step away from the basket and make plays. We’ll be challenged, it didn’t help us in Washington. I look at each game individually and don’t read too much into it."
On his demeanor…
“We were in a heated moment following the loss against Washington. I think DJ played 17 minutes, not his normal role. He’s struggled for about two and half games now so I think that was a contributing factor to it. He has certain standards of his performance, you couple that with a few losses, not playing up to his standards, you’re going to get emotional. He lost his cool after the game, so it was a situation we handled the best way we could. We needed to do what we did, so the action we took was appropriate. DJ and I have been fine since. We met twice since we got back and talked about a lot of things. I anticipate there being no issues moving forward with DJ.”
On the difficulty of handling situations like that…
“It’s apart of our job. I’m an old school guy, I was coached very hard. I’ve changed my coaching style, I’m nowhere near as demanding in terms of verbally talking to players like I was 10 years ago in Buffalo. It’s a different age and you have to adjust and adapt on how you communicate with your players. We have a very healthy environment with how we coach the guys and I think the guys enjoy being in the program.”
On in-game frustration…
“When you go through a stretch like this, it’s going to challenge you. If you’re not having some frustration and not saying some tough things to your teammates, just accepting failure and defeat, then why are we in this business? These kids should be aggravated and frustrated. They should be able to communicate with each other and sometimes, in not the nicest way. The world we live in is hyper stressful and there’s a lot on the line for all these kids personally and collectively. We’ve done too much already this year to see that go up in flames. I’m happy that there was some conflict, and that there is conflict. That shows me that people care.”
On if approach this week in practice was similar to last week…
“In its simplest form, we’re not defending. We could talk about the offense too because we didn't make shots at Washington, shot 29% and still got to overtime with all that going on. Washington State we just didn’t guard the three point line again. They’re very good at it, they make nine a game, but they made 14, so if we’re an above average defense, we should hold them to at least their average or less instead of allowing that many more threes made. We watched all of those examples, we did a little more film study trying to understand why guys are getting cleaner looks. Just focus on our defense. I’m not going to go into all the details that we discussed and shared because that’s internal, about what we need to fix and how we need to fix it. The other thing is we have to stop getting behind in games because we have to scramble and exert a lot of energy pressing, trapping, running around and getting matched up right because we’re digging a hole for ourselves. Hopefully getting off toa better start will allow us to sit down and guard someone in the half court without having to run around and trap the whole game.”
On turning negative emotions into positive…
“You have to get up off the mat. We live in a world of great highs and low lows. We’re not the only program in the country that might have gotten off to a great, fantastic start and then hit a bad patch in the middle or some point in the season. It’s all different times, different parts of the season that you experience these types of situations. You would hope that maybe we could have played a little better in the first two minutes of overtime in Washington, maybe that would have stopped the bleeding. Then we could have found our winning ways again and unfortunately it didn’t happen. We have another opportunity this week and so, how do we handle failure? We’ve been tested right now and this is obviously a big week for us. It’ll be interesting to see how we collectively respond tomorrow night.”
On being prepared for ups and downs…
“I was just in DFA staring up at the rafters and I wasn’t seeing man banners up there. Historically, that hasn’t happened. I’m fighting for it, I’m going after it. I think it’s too early to judge how we’re going to finish the rest of the season. We went to 15-3, feeling like we were getting close to the top of the mountain to 15-7 now. We’ll see what happens over the last nine games before we judge how we finished the season here but I will say there were a couple years that we finished extremely strong including last year and the COVID year that they canceled the season. It’s hard to say, ‘this is how we do it here’ so I’m not really going to go into that.”
On Austin Nunez…
“We have won a lot of games with the group that started. DJ, we had his thing and it’s over. He’ll be back in the lineup and that’s where we’re going. Austin has had a great season. He’s exceeded expectations for what a freshman is doing at this level. There aren’t many, huge impact guys in our league - we’re going to be playing against one on Thursday in Pope, who’s had a great year at Oregon State - but certainly, as I talk with Austin, certainly a chance for his role to continue to expand and grow because he’s being very productive and plays both ends of the floor. I’ve had great sixth men like Remi [Martin] or Alonzo [Verge] in that role and maybe minutes will increase. We’ll have to see game-to-game how guys are performing.”
On this week's games…
“I think you nailed it with ‘every game is different.’ We struggled to win that game. They played very well, they have some good young players and are going to do some things to test our defense. They are a little bit unique with their forwards being able to step away from the basket and make plays. We’ll be challenged, it didn’t help us in Washington. I look at each game individually and don’t read too much into it."