While the ‘McKale Mary’ will replay in the minds of Sun Devil fans for years to come, Arizona State (20-9, 11-7 Pac-12) has to move forward with the next game. Their Thursday matchup with No. 4 UCLA (25-4, 16-2) will be just as tough of a challenge for head coach Bobby Hurley and company as they look to carry their momentum from Saturday into Pauley Pavilion, where the Bruins haven’t lost this year.
“We tried to close the book on it yesterday,” Hurley said of Saturday’s victory over Arizona. “The grit and resilience to do something special like that has got to give you a boost of confidence to beat a team of that caliber.”
Even though Arizona State finds itself with another 20-win season and sitting in fourth place in the Pac-12 standings, it can’t rest on its laurels. Finishing the regular season in that spot is crucial as the top four seeds in the league earn a first-round bye in the conference tournament next week. It presents an opportunity to play to open up play against a team that isn’t as rested as you are, as well as being just two games away, rather than three, from a potential Pac-12 Championship Game berth, a contest where victory grantees your place in the field of 68.
The common consensus around the college basketball world is that the Pac-12 will send Arizona and UCLA to the NCAA Tournament, with USC looking like another league representative that will also hear their name called on Selection Sunday. As for the Sun Devils, they are included in 43 of the 97 brackets on Bracket Matrix, a site that averages all major publication’s NCAA Tournament bracket projections. Therefore, plenty of minds will still need to be convinced that ASU’s tournament resume is strong after its miraculous win on Saturday. Yet, no one in Tempe is disillusioned that Arizona State’s work is done, which is Hurley is relishing that chance with UCLA and USC on the docket.
“We kinda laid out what was at stake this week and how big of a week this is,” Hurley emphasized. “Trying to reinforce that message to them, they didn’t appear to be a team that wasn’t hungry or content in how we practiced; that will surface when the ball goes up Thursday night.”
The team’s recent performances have given both Hurley and fans optimism for ASU’s matchups this weekend with the Bruins and Trojans, both of whom bested the Sun Devils on their home floor last month. For a team that’s statistically been better playing away from Tempe, ASU is 10-4 combined between road and neutral site games; what looks like a hellacious gauntlet is just another chance to prove people wrong after having done it last Saturday.
“In that environment, you wanna try and generate confidence,” Hurley said. “Back-to-back two top-ten teams is certainly a big ask. We talk about these as opportunities. They’re changes to dramatically change our season.”
The first opportunity to tip the scales will come on Thursday night against a UCLA team that is a perfect 15-0 on its home court. After Arizona State fought valiantly in its 74-62 defeat against the Bruins on January 19, Hurley is far more aware of the maturity and overall balance that the Bruins have.
“They’re terrific,” Hurley noted of UCLA. “They’re a veteran team with experience, they have the clutch guys that can make shots, they’re very well coached, they check a lot of the boxes. They’re an elite team. We’ve got our work cut out for us Thursday night.”
A back-and-forth battle that didn’t go their way was important for the team to learn from and recognize the importance of closing out games.
“The second half, they made the big plays when it mattered,” Hurley said of the previous loss to UCLA. “We played at a high level for 35 minutes; we weren’t able to close it.”
The loss to the Bruins last month began a spiral that sent the Sun Devils into a stretch where they would lose four of their next five contests. This span is what knocked ASU off the tournament bubble before they firmly put themselves back on it with their upset win in Tucson. Even with losses in that span to some of the conference’s lower teams in Washington and Washington State, Hurley doesn’t ever think the team was discouraged, as they recognized their opponents in a way that the rest of the nation does.
“We had never been deterred,” Hurley remembered. “We had a poor stretch where we lost to some good teams. Our league isn’t appropriately respected, in my opinion. We feel like we were doing well the whole way, and people threw us off the bubble immediately, which is fine. Keep plugging along and attack all these games.”
The trip to Los Angeles could possibly decide ASU’s postseason prospects, but along with the natural sense of urgency, Hurley is going into this weekend with the utmost confidence in his players. Reigning Pac-12 player of the week Desmond Cambridge and other starters certainly deserve much of the credit, but a significant level of production by the reserves has aided the Sun Devils in recent games, especially against Arizona.
“I was excited to see multiple guys have the ball go through the basket,” Hurley said of the team’s depth. “I thought our bench was awesome. Jamiya Neal played his best game as a Sun Devil; Gaffney was really good too.”
While Austin Nunez is day-to-day while still under concussion protocol, the work in the backcourt by Neal was essential to the win on Saturday with 12 points, and the team hopes he can continue his quality play as they come up on a final stretch that will test their authenticity as a postseason team.
“Those are the teams (Arizona, UCLA, USC) that you’re gonna see at the very end,” Hurley noted. “Whether it’s the conference championship game, the chance to go to a Sweet Sixteen or Final Four, those are the teams you have to beat.”
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