Arizona State men’s basketball head coach Bobby Hurley said his team does not have any time to feel sorry for itself after an ugly 115-69 loss to No. 1 Kentucky on Monday because the rest of its difficult non-conference schedule still looms.
However, the team learned lessons from a loss to a Kentucky group Hurley said is “one of the best” teams he’s seen in a long time.
“High-level teams expose your weaknesses, bring them to the surface,” Hurley said. “We’re taking a hard look at what we have to do to improve and get better to not have things like that continue to happen. There were signs of it coming. You never want to lose that way. I’ll never tolerate losing that way or accept losing that way, but it happened.”
While reviewing the film, Hurley said he noticed Kentucky —the country’s top team — was on the floor diving for more loose balls than ASU.
Junior guard Shannon Evans II said ASU strives to emulate the “blue-collar” mindset with its effort.
“They were diving on the floor and they got lottery picks,” he said. “They got top 5 guys and they’re still diving on the floor when they’re up 20, 30 points.
“The little things our coaches preached that we took for granted, they came out and showed.”
Hurley said there were unfavorable signs pointing to ASU’s eventual loss to Kentucky. He mentioned the team’s poor defensive performance against The Citadel — primarily in transition — in which it gave up 110 points.
After that 127-110 win on Nov. 23, Hurley said he would be “scared” to see how many points Kentucky would score on the Sun Devils if they played defense like they did against The Citadel.
His fears were validated, putting further emphasis on a need for defensive improvement.
“We have to have more energy on defense,” Hurley said. “We got to be scrappy, feisty and use our quickness. It was not good that we allowed our inability to play efficiently on offense affect our mood and how we defended. If we miss a bad shot or turn the ball over, we have to be able to flip the switch and play the (defensive) end of the floor aggressively. It’s a mindset.”
Evans said he believes Kentucky is the best team in the country at pressuring the ball, another aspect ASU is looking to improve.
Although Hurley has preached moving the ball and making the extra pass, Evans mentioned ASU is rushing its shots. Hurley said the team has continued to work on ball movement in practice.
ASU’s difficult non-conference schedule continues with a home game against UNLV on Saturday before it travels to play No. 15 Purdue at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 6. Then, it finishes the week with a road game at San Diego State on Dec. 10.
“A lot of people are counting us out because we have a couple of losses or whatever, but I feel like we could easily turn it around seven games into the season,” Evans said. “We could turn it around and get ready for Pac-12 play.”
Hurley said ASU needs to quickly find an identity.
“You never want to lose that way, you never want to feel that way as an athlete, a coach a player,” he said. “It’s a wake-up call. I think the guys have internalized that. We can’t forget the way we felt after that game and hopefully that will enable us to practice more consistently at a higher level so we carry those things over to the floor when we’re playing in games.”
