It’s full circle for the Hurley brothers here at the men’s Final Four.
Little brother Dan Hurley is leading his Connecticut Huskies against Alabama on Saturday while Bobby Hurley’s ASU program is the host school in Glendale.
Bobby had a front-row seat for his brother’s first national title last year, and he won’t have to travel far as Dan tries to complete the repeat in Glendale.
During Dan’s media availability on Thursday, he commented on why Bobby loves living in Arizona, and what a program under his brother could look like with the right resources:
“You see why he values his job here. I think he’s in a position to have all the resources that a lot of us at this Final Four have, when he has that at his full disposal, he’ll be up on this dais and I’ll be supporting him.”
Quite the brotherly nudge to ASU.
No matter your opinion on Bobby Hurley and the job he’s done at Arizona State, it’s hard to argue that he has not been running into this new world of college athletics with a full war chest.
There’s bringing a knife to a gun fight, and then there’s Hurley, who has been forced to wield a spork the past few years.
The NIL situation is improving at Arizona State. But Sun Devil leadership was glacial when it came to jumping into that race a few years ago.
Despite what Michael Crow said 13 months ago, the basketball stadium is also in desperate need of a revamp. The air controlling system needs updating, railing needs to be added to the stairs. Those two significant changes would get the stadium back to zero.
Doug Haller relayed this story in a column from 2022 on The Athletic.
Prior to his first season, a reporter asked then-Arizona State coach Bill Frieder about Desert Financial Arena, then known as the University Activity Center. “Sure, on the surface it looks great,” Frieder said. Then he listed everything in need of an upgrade. “Ten years behind the times, this place,” Frieder said. “Archaic. But we’ll get it turned around.”
This was in 1989! The program still hasn’t caught up.
No matter what corner you turn in that building, you can find something that needs to be updated.
Let’s go back a few years to February 16, 2023.
ASU dropped a tough game against Colorado on a Thursday night at a time where each win was crucial to ASU’s postseason hopes.
In his postgame availability, Bobby Hurley gave thoughtful answers to dissect what went wrong that night. But he got distracted at one point.
The media room is a very wide open space that shares the area with some stadium storage seperated by a curtain.
Someone on the other side of the curtain was moving equipment, boxes, something around, and it was making a good amount of noise. It’s not their fault the noise was bleeding though. They were doing their job too.
It’s the fact it’s some piping and a curtain.
Take a look:
I have a hard time believing the head coaches at Connecticut, Alabama, NC State and Purdue having to deal with that.
Crow descrribed the building as “functional” last year. For a university that prides itself on innovation, that’s quite a low bar for the teams using that building and be a walking billboard for the university.
Will Dan’s comments sway Michael Crow to make a big push to lead with athletics? Probably not.
The State Press came out of their latest sit-down with Crow and relayed the programs he would like to emulate:
In the revamping of ASU athletics, Crow described changes to different parts of the department, such as the financial and operational models on which it’s built. He said the model would more closely resemble the athletic departments of institutions like Stanford, Vanderbilt and Northwestern.
These schools have had their on-field success certianly. Vanderbilt is a standard in the baseball world. We’re not that far removed from Stanford football making regular trips to the Rose Bowl, and their Olympic sports are second to none. Northwestern men’s basketball has cracked through to a consistent tournament bid over recent years.
In terms of academics, that’s some incredible company to be in.
But when ASU athletic fans are discussing the “sleeping giant” in Tempe on the field to pair with the high standard in the classroom, they are thinking the likes of Notre Dame.
But Crow has been consistent with his approach in athletics, whether sports fans like it or not.
It’s not crazy to envision Bobby Hurley gracing a bigger dais and making consistent tournament runs with the right amount of resources.
The question is…would it be with the Sun Devils or elsewhere?
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