COACH HURLEY ZOOM WITH MEDIA (WEDNESDAY/DEC. 30, 2020)
OPENING STATEMENT
“We haven’t spoken in a while with the cancellation and postponement in Utah, so I’ll give an update. We had some tough news with regards to our game on Thursday and that’s in the process of being reworked right now. We have two coaches right now, Coach Burno and Coach Rosenthal both have undisclosed medical. They’re not going to be around the program for I don’t know the number of days. There would be no chance that if we in fact make the trip to Washington that they would be on that trip. In addition to that Taeshon Cherry is going to be out for a week, he’s not injured and it’s not a disciplinary issue. We haven’t practiced the past three days; we had some good practices on Saturday and Sunday after Christmas as we were preparing for this week. We did not practice Monday, Tuesday, and today and we’re still in a holding pattern and are hopeful that we can potentially get back on the court tomorrow, but still some things are up in the air that need to happen.”
ON PLAYING RUSTY AFTER BREAK AND STRUGGLE RESCHEDULING
“It’s been extremely challenging not having Alonzo Verge for a week (missed Cal game on Dec. 3) and Marcus (Bagley) for a couple weeks and having games postponed. The guys earn the right to go home if they could to spend Christmas with their family and it’s been such a hard year for them that it was important to them, and to come back and jump start again thinking you’re going to be playing a few games this week but to miss a few dayy...it’s been challenging. Again, there’s a lot of people that are struggling and hurting, physically, family members lost, jobs lost, so we’re going to keep plugging along here. I think the guys want to play, the players want to play and we’re going to do everything to provide that opportunity for them.”
ON REMY MARTIN
“Remy’s fine, he’s going to be really good the rest of the year. Sometimes people want you to be someone you’re not and you’ve got to be yourself and I think he’s going to get back to being who he is. He’s had some really good games for us, I’m not sure on a record standpoint where we would be if he didn’t have some of the games that he’s had. He’s doing fine, you’re going to see a different vibe from him the rest of the year. It’s been a struggle with chemistry, it’s contradictory to everything we know as coaches with structure, routine, habits and not having the ability to practice and not have the ability to prepare for teams; it’s been a unique experience for all of us. Remy has a really good handle on what he has to do moving forward.”
ON HOW TO KEEP MORALE HIGH
“We had a Zoom call yesterday. The NCAA requires a team to take one day off a week and Monday was going to be our scheduled days off with games on Thursday and Saturday. Yesterday was not planned and the coaches reminisced to the players about last spring and summer telling them it’s going to be a unique and different year, you’ve got to be mentally tough, push through things and to be adaptable and flexible to what’s happening. We tried to convey to them to stay positive and to stay in their routine knowing that on the horizon we will be playing games again, whether it be this weekend or next week and we’ll know more about that soon. We’ve just got to stick with it.”
ON PROCESS OF RESCHEDULING GAMES
“We discussed what our issues are and when you’re formulating policy and discussing how we’re going to get back to play with this going on, you can’t even forecast the issues that might arise within a program; it’s going to make you ask some really hard questions, so we consult our team doctors and administration. We have detailed conversations on what’s the right thing to do, what’s the best interest of the student athlete and their safety, and that’s our mine priority. We collectively make a decision and it’s not only Arizona state, and that’s important. It’s also Washington State, Arizona, and Washington and everyone has to be on the same page on what we’re going through and be comfortable with us competing.”
ON SCHEDULE BENEFITING ASU
“I look at it like we’re going to play all these games, and it’s going to play out how it plays out and it just worked in our favor in February. We touched on last year where we got a number of difficult games, at Arizona, the Oregon trip, we played Colorado who was really good last year, then we had a month period of time where we would go on a run. I don’t put a lot of stock into that; I do feel that it is important to get off to a good start. I felt like last year we were chasing and got ourselves into contention late. Certainly, every coach says the same thing, that we’d love to get off to a good start, build some momentum, and some of that confidence.”
ON CHRIS OSTEN’S ROLE AND REBOUNDING
“Getting Marcus back is going to help with rebounding, we lost him, and he was our leading rebounder. It’s been a constant dialogue and prioritizing that, not only from our front court, we need our guards and wings to rebound well, but it’s got to be a team thing. It’s not exclusive to Chris Osten and Jalen Graham, certainly they understand the importance in that regard and the numbers show that they are, but it’s got to be something we need to improve on and that’s something the team has to understand, we’ve addressed it and closed the gap on some of those numbers.”
ON WANTING TO WIN AFTER UTEP LOSS
“It’s tough. From my standpoint after those film sessions and practices after UTEP I felt like I had the groups full attention prior to that Utah game with the way we were practicing and the energy, specifically the improvement in areas we needed to improve, the areas that were getting in the way of us being more successful. You can’t have a short-term memory on that, I felt pretty good on what we looked like on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was one of the worst practices to me, they’ve had several days off for Christmas, but it wasn’t even the worst one I’ve had here or at Buffalo. I have pretty good optimism and I agree that the guys don’t like how they feel right now and what we looked like the past couple games and we want to get back on track, so it’s been frustrating that we’ve had these setbacks in these games and not being able to play.”
ON MARCUS BAGLEY
“You might have seen he had some good clips right before Christmas, hitting some threes and dunking, going about the rim and rebounding. He was doing all the things that he was doing well prior to that and he’s completely healthy right now. Certainly, it’s good for him to get more reps under his belt and more practice, unfortunately the last three days have been another stoppage. I think he should be fine, and we’ll see what he can look like if we get back on the court tomorrow.”
ON JOSH CHRISTOPHER'S ENTHUSIASM FOR THE TEAM
“I have not noticed, I’m not the guy to go to the locker room and put my ear to the door to see what’s being said. That’s where the real conversations take place, but certainly he’s established himself as the guy that’s proven he can produce and he’s a very good communicator. We’re always looking for guys that want to lead so we’re definitely open to that. Overall, our new team needs to play for each other and that no one player is more talented than one guy may be. We need to play more of a collective approach, it’s hard enough to beat an opponent when we can’t beat ourselves, so we need everyone to pull in the same direction. If they ever imagine how they could utilize each other during the course of the game when necessary then we have a really high ceiling, but until we realize that we’re going to struggling.”
OPENING STATEMENT
“We haven’t spoken in a while with the cancellation and postponement in Utah, so I’ll give an update. We had some tough news with regards to our game on Thursday and that’s in the process of being reworked right now. We have two coaches right now, Coach Burno and Coach Rosenthal both have undisclosed medical. They’re not going to be around the program for I don’t know the number of days. There would be no chance that if we in fact make the trip to Washington that they would be on that trip. In addition to that Taeshon Cherry is going to be out for a week, he’s not injured and it’s not a disciplinary issue. We haven’t practiced the past three days; we had some good practices on Saturday and Sunday after Christmas as we were preparing for this week. We did not practice Monday, Tuesday, and today and we’re still in a holding pattern and are hopeful that we can potentially get back on the court tomorrow, but still some things are up in the air that need to happen.”
ON PLAYING RUSTY AFTER BREAK AND STRUGGLE RESCHEDULING
“It’s been extremely challenging not having Alonzo Verge for a week (missed Cal game on Dec. 3) and Marcus (Bagley) for a couple weeks and having games postponed. The guys earn the right to go home if they could to spend Christmas with their family and it’s been such a hard year for them that it was important to them, and to come back and jump start again thinking you’re going to be playing a few games this week but to miss a few dayy...it’s been challenging. Again, there’s a lot of people that are struggling and hurting, physically, family members lost, jobs lost, so we’re going to keep plugging along here. I think the guys want to play, the players want to play and we’re going to do everything to provide that opportunity for them.”
ON REMY MARTIN
“Remy’s fine, he’s going to be really good the rest of the year. Sometimes people want you to be someone you’re not and you’ve got to be yourself and I think he’s going to get back to being who he is. He’s had some really good games for us, I’m not sure on a record standpoint where we would be if he didn’t have some of the games that he’s had. He’s doing fine, you’re going to see a different vibe from him the rest of the year. It’s been a struggle with chemistry, it’s contradictory to everything we know as coaches with structure, routine, habits and not having the ability to practice and not have the ability to prepare for teams; it’s been a unique experience for all of us. Remy has a really good handle on what he has to do moving forward.”
ON HOW TO KEEP MORALE HIGH
“We had a Zoom call yesterday. The NCAA requires a team to take one day off a week and Monday was going to be our scheduled days off with games on Thursday and Saturday. Yesterday was not planned and the coaches reminisced to the players about last spring and summer telling them it’s going to be a unique and different year, you’ve got to be mentally tough, push through things and to be adaptable and flexible to what’s happening. We tried to convey to them to stay positive and to stay in their routine knowing that on the horizon we will be playing games again, whether it be this weekend or next week and we’ll know more about that soon. We’ve just got to stick with it.”
ON PROCESS OF RESCHEDULING GAMES
“We discussed what our issues are and when you’re formulating policy and discussing how we’re going to get back to play with this going on, you can’t even forecast the issues that might arise within a program; it’s going to make you ask some really hard questions, so we consult our team doctors and administration. We have detailed conversations on what’s the right thing to do, what’s the best interest of the student athlete and their safety, and that’s our mine priority. We collectively make a decision and it’s not only Arizona state, and that’s important. It’s also Washington State, Arizona, and Washington and everyone has to be on the same page on what we’re going through and be comfortable with us competing.”
ON SCHEDULE BENEFITING ASU
“I look at it like we’re going to play all these games, and it’s going to play out how it plays out and it just worked in our favor in February. We touched on last year where we got a number of difficult games, at Arizona, the Oregon trip, we played Colorado who was really good last year, then we had a month period of time where we would go on a run. I don’t put a lot of stock into that; I do feel that it is important to get off to a good start. I felt like last year we were chasing and got ourselves into contention late. Certainly, every coach says the same thing, that we’d love to get off to a good start, build some momentum, and some of that confidence.”
ON CHRIS OSTEN’S ROLE AND REBOUNDING
“Getting Marcus back is going to help with rebounding, we lost him, and he was our leading rebounder. It’s been a constant dialogue and prioritizing that, not only from our front court, we need our guards and wings to rebound well, but it’s got to be a team thing. It’s not exclusive to Chris Osten and Jalen Graham, certainly they understand the importance in that regard and the numbers show that they are, but it’s got to be something we need to improve on and that’s something the team has to understand, we’ve addressed it and closed the gap on some of those numbers.”
ON WANTING TO WIN AFTER UTEP LOSS
“It’s tough. From my standpoint after those film sessions and practices after UTEP I felt like I had the groups full attention prior to that Utah game with the way we were practicing and the energy, specifically the improvement in areas we needed to improve, the areas that were getting in the way of us being more successful. You can’t have a short-term memory on that, I felt pretty good on what we looked like on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was one of the worst practices to me, they’ve had several days off for Christmas, but it wasn’t even the worst one I’ve had here or at Buffalo. I have pretty good optimism and I agree that the guys don’t like how they feel right now and what we looked like the past couple games and we want to get back on track, so it’s been frustrating that we’ve had these setbacks in these games and not being able to play.”
ON MARCUS BAGLEY
“You might have seen he had some good clips right before Christmas, hitting some threes and dunking, going about the rim and rebounding. He was doing all the things that he was doing well prior to that and he’s completely healthy right now. Certainly, it’s good for him to get more reps under his belt and more practice, unfortunately the last three days have been another stoppage. I think he should be fine, and we’ll see what he can look like if we get back on the court tomorrow.”
ON JOSH CHRISTOPHER'S ENTHUSIASM FOR THE TEAM
“I have not noticed, I’m not the guy to go to the locker room and put my ear to the door to see what’s being said. That’s where the real conversations take place, but certainly he’s established himself as the guy that’s proven he can produce and he’s a very good communicator. We’re always looking for guys that want to lead so we’re definitely open to that. Overall, our new team needs to play for each other and that no one player is more talented than one guy may be. We need to play more of a collective approach, it’s hard enough to beat an opponent when we can’t beat ourselves, so we need everyone to pull in the same direction. If they ever imagine how they could utilize each other during the course of the game when necessary then we have a really high ceiling, but until we realize that we’re going to struggling.”