With Gonzaga looming, Bobby Hurley knows his Arizona State basketball team has to get better - fast
Bobby Hurley didn't think his team would need much motivation to fly around the court and play with sustained energy in their season opener vs. Idaho State.
He was wrong.
The Arizona State men's basketball team came out flat and struggled to put away the Bengals in a 55-48 victory at Desert Financial Arena Tuesday night.
"Especially in the first game, you would imagine there's just a lot of juice, the guys are really amped up to play," Hurley said after the game. "The last thing you would think you would have to worry about is being motivated. Myself and my staff gotta do a better job to get them ready to play. It was just flat. We let them hang around. It's rare that you see a team shoot 25 percent from the field for the game and have a chance to win in the last four minutes. It almost never happens that way."
That's exactly what happened as Idaho State trailed 45-44 with 5:07 left in the game. The Sun Devils ended the game on a 10-4 run to put their Big Sky opponent away.
Missouri State transfer Alston Mason led the Sun Devils with 14 points and Milwaukee transfer BJ Freeman added 12 points and 8 rebounds off the bench.
Up next for the Sun Devils is Santa Clara on Friday night. Then they travel to Spokane, Washington, to face No. 8 Gonzaga on Sunday afternoon. The same Gonzaga team that destroyed No. 6 Baylor 101-63 Monday night.
"I think there's gotta be ownership through everybody, right down the line, starting with me," Hurley said. "We're playing two teams the next two games I think have a chance to look like NCAA Tournament caliber teams, so we gotta fix this thing quick."
Here are the highlights of Hurley's postgame press conference after the win over Idaho State:
Hurley on his team's rebounding effort
"For as good as I thought we guarded with energy at times, we didn't rebound. If that team got 16 offensive rebounds, some of our other opponents, as we start hitting the harder part of our schedule, they're gonna get like a million offensive rebounds in a game if that's our effort and desire to rebound. There's still a lot that we have to get better on."
Hurley on his team's overall play
"Just a lot of issues both sides. Hard to really find any positives."
"We were doing bizarre stuff out there on offense. Just throwing the ball around ... chaos at times. We have a lot to improve on, a lot to get better on."
Hurley on freshman Jayden Quaintance
"I haven't said a bad thing about JQ. ... I don't know if the fouls messed him up mentally early in the game, but he was kind of out of it today. I don't know if I'd ever watch a game where he got one rebound in the game for the minutes he played."
(Quaintance picked up two early fouls and went to the bench with 18:13 to play in the first half. He played just 19 minutes and scored 2 points, finishing 0-of-6 from the field.)
Hurley on the carryover from the Duke exhibition
"I felt like I'm not getting through to them. And that's just what I said to them after. Whatever we did this week, it didn't fix any of our problems."
Hurley on freshman Joson Sanon
"He hit some shots and he showed a glimpse of what he can do as far as shotmaking. Without his point production I don't think we would have won the game, For a freshman I thought he did fine."
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Ben Sherman has been covering the sports world for most of his journalism career, including 17 years with The Oregonian/OregonLive. One of his favorite memories was covering the 1999 Fiesta Bowl - the first BCS National Championship Game - at Sun Devil Stadium.