ASU Head Coach Bobby Hurley
Opening statement:
“We kind of grinded that game out with Stanford coming off of their loss against UCLA and you never want to go 0-2 in the first two games of the season so we know that they would play really hard. My main issue is that if you’re upset about a game that you want a lead play, in which you shouldn’t, is the two turnovers. In the first half, we kind of lost our way and had some poor turnovers in the second half… we weren’t working to get open, we were stealing, and we were kind of giving away points more often, but our defense was a lot better. I like how sometimes when you lose a lead, and then pressure is added and you don’t know if you can shake it, but the guys recovered and made some good plays to pull it off.”
On better effort:
“You know, our plan was to speed them up and make them shoot a fraction of a second quicker than they wanted to shoot, so I’m pleased that we only gave up 13 offensive rebounds looking at one of the tallest teams in the country.”
On how it feels after a few years to be 2-0 in the Pac-12:
“I never was feeling panicked over there, I have this feeling that we have a group that knows how to win and have proven that they can make winning plays. Even as things were looking dicey at times, I still trusted that we would find a way. I still feel good, we should feel good, not only about our Pac-12 record but of our record overall and what we’ve done so far.”
On the defensive group:
“The pressure was great tonight, the intensity of how we regarded them was good, I don’t have any issues with our defense since it’s bread and butter and we have to play with that type of energy. We knew on film that Stanford had shown that if you can speed them up a bit and add pressure on them that they would turn it over or shoot tough shots and we were able to follow through with our game plan.”
On what makes this team unique:
“When you can keep fresh bodies on the court, I think we had one guy out there for 30 minutes… when you’re able to get guys out there who can sustain a few minutes of high level, high energy, and then you bring someone else in to do the same thing, you’re going to have a consistent effort. Through out the summer and before the season started, I saw Desmond Cambridge Jr. jumping passing lanes and I was getting mad, because we were trying to run and execute and blowing everything up, and it was happening to me all summer. Fortunately for us, he’s now doing it to other people.”
On defensive capabilities looking at national analytics:
“You have to have confidence no matter where you go that you’re consistently doing it so you can have a chance to win. There’s a bunch of numbers on this stat sheet where you might say, ‘Wow, how did we win? We shot 4-23 via 17 turnovers and we got a victory.’ And again, I think it shows the value of how hard we’re playing out on the court and the athleticism and relent this group has.”
Arizona State Guard Desmond Cambridge Jr.
On having the “green light” to shoot…
“That’s a hard question for me personally, because I might shoot some questionable shots sometimes. But I feel like that’s Coach Hurley’s identity at this school. I really like that personally. As long as you play defense you’re fine. We have freedom but we still have structure.”
On having short stints of playing time…
“It lets us exert a lot of energy in a short amount of time. It lets us guard people full court. We interrupt their offense. Stanford and Colorado both have slower offenses. If you let teams like that get comfortable then they will pick you apart. “
On the physicality of the defense…
“The guys we have here are more God-given.
We are athletic, tall, and can communicate really well. We can switch everything which makes it a lot easier. We have to be able to yell at each other but keep your cool.”
On not panicking…
“I got two fouls at the start of the second half so I was watching when they started to come back. I was just sitting there fuming. You see I am very energized. Then I came in and hit those two shots and you can see how I provide that spark.”
ASU Forward Warren Washington
On what was different with rebounding tonight:
“I feel like its different every game because some teams shoot a lot, some games it can be a lot of rebounds. Sometimes there’s just an extra emphasis on guys going to the glass, so I felt like today honestly as a team, as a collective, we really focused on that aspect of the game. Last year I watched the film and it seemed like we were outrebounded playing them, so I feel like coach really wanted to put an extra emphasis on it and I felt like we executed it really well on the defensive end and boards in general.”
On team “grinding it out”:
“Playing for someone like Bobby, he is just tough minded, just a competitor in general. He always preaches to us that you can’t depend on scoring and you can’t look at scoring as something to judge whether you played good or not. So, I felt like we all just want to win and to win we gotta play defense, defense wins championships. So I felt like we were just following the blueprint that Bobby planned for us.”
On what worked well for the defense in the first half:
“I felt like we just did a good job of containing some of the key players, Ingram had a solid game. I felt like we did a good job of just containing him in the first half, other guys too. I just felt like we were everywhere, flying everywhere and the guards did a great job of switching and just doing the game plan that coach put forward for us.”
On what Desmond Cambridge Jr. brings:
“Des, we all know what Des brings to the table. He’s a scorer, he’s a dog, he’s alpha and I feel like we follow him as a group and as a team. We follow that and I feel like he just carries over with all of us and it rubs off.”