Wilner on ASU basketball: Hurley’s future, Crow’s master plan, the unsigned contract and more

Anywhere else, a contract extension unsigned for 362 days would be cause for pause.

But at Arizona State, where the football recruiting scandal has lasted three years and the athletic director chair has been vacant for four months, the delay feels more like standard fare.

Also, it adds an incremental amount of uncertainty to Bobby Hurley’s status for the 2024-25 season.

Fans are grumbling about the state of the program, but that’s not new, either. Grumbling over the state of Hurley’s problem is an annual exercise in Tempe.

And based on a USA Today report last week about the unsigned contract, Hurley would be a free man this summer, able to walk away from ASU without owing the school a financial penalty. Technically, he’s working under the terms of a deal signed years ago, which expires June 30.

Despite the haze, is there substantive reason to expect a coaching change?

President Michael Crow hasn’t indicated he’s pondering a move. Instead, Crow told the Hotline recently that ASU is focused on “making some design changes and updating our models for operations and systems” to the athletic department.

Once that process concludes — presumably sometime this spring — the Sun Devils will hire an athletic director to replace Ray Anderson, who stepped down in November.

Also, Hurley enjoys living in The Valley and coaching ASU. (If he were able to ply his trade in an arena that wasn’t in dire need of renovation, all the better!)

The issue, naturally, is Hurley’s performance. The Sun Devils missed the NCAA Tournament this season, lost four more games than they won and were eliminated from the Pac-12 tournament in embarrassing fashion, with a 33-point loss to Utah.

But any argument for a coaching change must include the risk-reward calculation: What’s the likelihood of hiring someone who represents an indisputable upgrade, especially without a permanent athletic director to manage the search?

We are increasingly convinced it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. ASU’s institutional encumbrances would serve as limiting factors for any head coach.

In fact, Hurley is doing high-quality work compared to his predecessors.

Since the Sun Devils joined the Pac-12 in the summer of 1978, there have been 45 NCAA Tournaments, including this year’s event.

ASU’s nine head coaches over that span have made 10 appearances — one every 4.5 years.

But Hurley has reached the NCAAs three times in eight opportunities, or one every 2.7 years. He’s running well ahead of the historical standard.

(And it’s not like ASU has hired a series of schlubs: Bill Frieder, Rob Evans and Herb Sendek all had multiple NCAA appearances on their resumes prior to touching down in Tempe.)

Hurley’s rate of return would look even better had the 2020 tournament been played. The Sun Devils were tracking for a No. 9 or 10 seed before the pandemic intervened. Give credit for that season, and he has four appearances in nine years.

Yes, it’s fair to criticize Hurley for not guiding ASU into the tournament’s second round. He has won two games in the First Four but is 0-3 in the round of 64.

Yet again, there is historical context to consider: The Sun Devils have survived the opening weekend of March Madness just once in those 45 tournaments, way back in 1995.

Put another way: They haven’t made the Sweet 16 since Hurley, who’s 52, was playing in the NBA.

They didn’t make the Sweet 16 with Eddie House.

They didn’t make the Sweet 16 with Ike Diogu.

They didn’t make the Sweet 16 with James Harden.

Coaching Arizona State basketball is, like teaching kindergarten, immensely more difficult than it looks.

Tempe isn’t a basketball town like Tucson or Lawrence or Lexington.

The Sun Devils don’t have a high-end NIL game or a first-rate arena.

They don’t have elite in-state talent.

They have only produced three first-round picks in the past quarter century — recruits and transfers don’t view the program as a free-flowing pipeline to the NBA.

And life will only get more challenging for the Sun Devils next season when they enter the Big 12, arguably the stoutest league in the land.

Admittedly, standard operating procedure does not apply to ASU. This is, after all, the school that announced a bowl ban four days before the season opener.

But by the time the Sun Devils enter the Big 12 this summer, Hurley should have a signed contract extension in place (through the 2025-26 season).

By then, Crow should have finished his evaluation of the department’s models and operations.

By then, ASU should have a permanent athletic director in place to assess the basketball program and Hurley’s performance.

But for now, the status quo is both the most prudent and most likely outcome to the Hurley question.