ASU feeds off Bobby Hurley’s emotion in rout of Utah
By his standards, Bobby Hurley had been a sea of tranquility this season. Missed calls didn’t enrage him. Disputes with referees weren’t turning into heated altercations. Using the first four years of his tenure as a barometer, he was even-keeled on the sidelines through 17 games.
Saturday sent him over the edge.
Early in the second half, with ASU leading by a dozen, Sun Devil point guard Remy Martin knocked Utah’s Rylan Jones’ dribble out of his hand. The two sprinted halfway down the court, nudging for position. A few steps later, Martin’s arms went flying and Jones passed the ball up court.
The collar of Hurley’s blue dress shirt bulged as his cheeks turned the hue of his red tie. His screams rose above the normal arena chatter. His stomps may have shaken the court. The closest official, running toward Hurley, didn’t hesitate to award him a technical.
“I’ve been fairly stoic this year,” Hurley said. “My emotions were elevated in this game and I felt very connected to the emotion of the game. I need to be myself and bring my emotion and my fire to the game.”
Surprisingly, it was Hurley’s first of the season. That, in it of itself, is a shock considering the fiery, unrelenting nature he’s shown officials in his time in Tempe. For the 17 games, he was rather calm.
Now, he wasn’t exactly the Dali Lama, but observers weren’t peeking at him after every foul expecting to see an outburst.
Perhaps even bizarre than it taking Hurley more than halfway through the season to pick up his first tech was that it came in the Sun Devils most dominant conference performance to date. ASU beat Utah 83-64, reliving some of its shooting with a 52-percent mark from the field and 61 percent from deep.
Some would even argue the two things coincided.
“A couple of the guys said, ‘I got you, Coach. We’re good,’” Hurley said. “Remy said, ‘We’re good now.’ You get some confidence.”
Added Martin: “I love that because it fires me up a little bit but, at the same time, I’ve got to make sure that he’s good and the team is still good … I’d rather have a guy fight like that for us than sit down. I love that guy.”
It seemed, all game, Hurley was building toward a technical foul. Several times throughout the night he was in the face of an official complaining about a perceived injustice, back to his form from years prior.
On one occasion, after ASU was called for a travel just seconds after it looked like the refs missed a travel on Utah, Hurley yelled across the court before throwing his arms up and breaking into a sly, pissed-off laugh.
“When he’s getting riled up and yelling at the refs, then we get hyped and we want to be on his side,” sophomore forward Taeshon Cherry said. “That’s a big part of our team, too. We all rally around coach Hurley.”
For what it’s worth, no coach seemed pleased with Saturday’s officials. ASU assistant coach
Rashon Burno was T’d up arguing an offensive foul call on Alonzo Verge. Thinking the technical was against Hurley, the student section broke out with chants of, “Bobby! Bobby!”
Late in the game, with the score out of reach for the Utes, Utah center Matt Van Komen dunked the ball and began hanging on the rim, hitting Cherry with his leg. He was assessed a technical. That set Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak over the edge. He berated the officials in a manner that made Hurley seem tame. And he kept going at them until they kicked him out.
“I just remember the dude’s legs were on my head and their coach was wildin’,” Cherry joked. “I don’t know what he was tripping on.”
Amidst the chaos of whistles and shoving and screaming, Cherry thought the technical against Krystkowiak was against Hurley. In some ways, Cherry may have even been amped for the possibility.
Cherry has racked up his fair share of techs in his season and a half with ASU. He’s high on the list of the most passionate Sun Devils. And he, unquestionably, has shown to have the shortest fuse. In that respect, he understands Hurley -- and his sometimes hypocritical messages.
“Every media timeout he says, ‘Keep your composure. Stay poised.’ But he doesn’t even stay poised,” Cherry said with a chuckle. “Once he got the technical, I knew something was wrong because he didn’t say anything at the media (timeout). He just sat down and like slammed the chair.
“At the next timeout, he was like, ‘My bad, I need to keep my composure.’”
Cherry said he told Hurley that the 48-year old coach’s hair was becoming gray last season. Hurley looks younger this season, Cherry said. He hasn’t been riling himself up on every possession and every foul call.
Cherry likes the calm Hurley better. But, on specific and intermittent occasions, when the fire and emotion pours out of Hurley, it can have phenomenal effects on his squad.
“Now he’s just calm. Before the game, he’s calm. He’s chill. I told him like, ‘You need to keep doing that. That’s how you need to be from now on,” Cherry said. But tonight he wasn’t like that, obviously.”
