A stack of black Adidas duffle bags sat on the sidewalk as three charter buses rolled up to Weatherup Center, at the ready to take Arizona State to the tarmac to board their flight to Dayton, Ohio.
The scene is the same for the second-straight year. Just one season after losing to Syracuse in the First Four, the NCAA Selection Committee is again making the Sun Devils head north and earn their way into the field of 64.
In a cruel turn of events for head coach Bobby Hurley and the Sun Devils, CBS went away from its one-year run of releasing the tournament teams in alphabetical order -- which allowed ASU to wait mere minutes to learn of its fate a year ago -- and instead released the bracket by regions.
So Hurley and the rest of the ASU team that gathered at his house for the second-straight year and waited and waited … and waited. Three and a half regions were announced before the TV showed the Sun Devil head coach’s former team, Buffalo, as a No. 6 seed.
“Oh, I know what’s happening here,” Hurley said Monday, recalling his selection Sunday emotions.
Sure enough, Hurley’s instincts were right. The Sun Devils showed up on the 11-line in a play-in game with fellow 11-seed St. John’s set for Wednesday night in Dayton.
“It was an awesome moment for our program,” Hurley said. “Very happy for our seniors, for Zylan (Cheatham) to have an opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament. We’re setting a standard for getting back and competing in these type of events.”
Hurley spoke about the banner hanging inside of Weatherup, the one that has all of the Sun Devils’ NCAA Tournament appearances written upon it. For the first time since 1980 and 1981, ASU will have back-to-back years plastered across that black banner.
The significance of that isn’t lost on Hurley.
“It’s great for your program when you have multiple years in a row,” he said. “Because then every new group of players that come in (and say), ‘Hey, this is what we do here. This is what we expect to do.’ The culture of winning and valuing winning and getting to the tournament and tournaments like this, hopefully, that’s starting to build and develop in our program.”
Some will knock ASU for appearing in the First Four two-straight years -- coming in as the 67th of 68 teams in the field for the second-straight year. That doesn’t bother Hurley, not yet. Before the Sun Devils can go compete for national championships and get off the bubble for good, they have to build something.
Hurley was asked what will define success for his team in this year’s tournament. He almost painted the situation as already being a success, like the Devils were rewarded for a good season and victories that come after will be icing on the cake.
“So many teams are not playing anymore and it’s so hard to get to this event,” Hurley said. “In the initial stages of it, you’re just so appreciative that you had a season that was worthy of playing in this event.
“And then you quickly move on.”
Hurley wouldn’t talk about the possibility of playing Buffalo, which he took to the tournament in 2015 until the matchup comes to fruition. But he would dish on St. John’s, a squad coached by NBA Hall of Famer Chris Mullin, that the Sun Devils beat by 12 a season ago.
“There are a lot of the same returning guys,” Hurley said of last year’s St. John’s team. “They’re very much a perimeter-oriented team, a very free-flowing team and a team that can go on runs because they can score in volume. They have an elite player in (guard) Shamorie Ponds.”
A lethal scorer, Ponds is averaging 19.5 points a game this season, seemingly fitting the mold of one of those hot tournament guards who win a game nearly all by himself.
ASU may lose that way. Heck, Hurley admitted that if the Sun Devils falter, it’s probably going to be in a hard-fought, blood-sweat-and-tears thriller like their loss to Oregon in the Pac-12 semifinals.
But Hurley was dismissive that the tournament stage would be too big for his team.
“When you’ve been in a lot of big games and you put it on the line, you hope that you can draw on that experience on the biggest stage,” he said. “We’ve been on that stage so I’m pretty confident that there won’t be from nerves or inexperience that we wouldn’t play well on Wednesday night.”
OTHER NOTES:
Point guard Remy Martin suffered a strained groin in the Pac-12 semifinal against Oregon, limiting his speed and ability to drive to the hoop. The MRI that came back did not reveal a tear and on Monday, Hurley gave a health update on his tenacious sophomore:
“Remy’s doing well. He was fairly limited today but that was by design because we don’t want him to have any additional setbacks. He’ll get more reps tomorrow when we get to Dayton but I don’t think he would do anything live until the game.
“We talked yesterday at the house and again today about how he’s feeling and I have great confidence that when the ball gets thrown up on Wednesday night, that he’ll be very close to 100 percent.”
