Bobby Hurley, Remy Martin, Zylan Cheatham, and Luguentz Dort stood inside the film room at Arizona State’s Weatherup Center. For the first time in months, there was no worry, no stress, no talk of missing the NCAA Tournament.
Barring multiple bid stealers and craziness on the bubble, the Sun Devils seemingly locked themselves into an at-large bid after Saturday’s 72-64 win at Arizona, sweeping the Wildcats for the first time in a decade.
It leaves Arizona State in a situation it hasn’t yet afforded in Hurley’s tenure. During his first two seasons, the Sun Devils needed to win the Pac-12 Tournament to clinch a spot in the Big Dance. Last year, a first-round win over Colorado would have ensured a sweat-free Selection Sunday.
None came to fruition.
Now, after a 21-9 regular season, ASU is the No. 2 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament, slated to play of the winner of UCLA and Stanford on Thursday in Las Vegas. Unlike their last three campaigns, the Sun Devils don’t need to look ahead.
This year, Hurley and Co. have a legit chance to run the table in the conference tournament. So, is there a different mindset?
“I think there is,” Hurley said. “We’re going to attack this tournament as if every game is our last. But I think we have a clear mind to go into this tournament just trying to focus on winning that and not having the pressure or the stress of wondering whether we’re going to be in the NCAA Tournament.
“I think we’re in solid position and we still have to play well and try to advance. But I don’t feel that pressure that we had last year going into the Pac-12.”
Hurley shouldn’t. The Sun Devils are penciled-in to nearly every bracketologists projection.
Hurley, though, has his own finger on the March pulse. His two National Championships at Duke are validation enough for his gauge of what wins in March, what common traits successful tournament teams possess.
“You want to be playing well. I thought last year we may have peaked earlier in the year and we weren’t winning games. (Going into the Pac-12 Tournament this year), we’ve won five of our last six and that’s a great sign.”
Beyond that, Hurley knows that the 2019 Sun Devils are far more equipped to make a deep March run than last year’s squad. They peaked early but they were able to regroup. They have depth …. oh, and more talent.
“I just think that there were certain things that we could only, we weren’t going to get more athletic,” Hurley said. We have a guy like Zylan, who you can really throw the ball to inside and, consistently, he’s going to get stuff done on the block.
“We have a better balance on offense, things that were just hard to do overall. That’s been the major difference, what Zylan’s been doing.”
Cheatham, who was forced to sit out last season due to NCAA transfer rules, was the only Sun Devil to make the All-Pac-12 First Team on Monday (Martin and Dort were both named to the second-team) after averaging a double-double this season.
All season, the redshirt senior has expressed his pleasure in ASU’s resiliency, a trait that sounds great after the fact but doesn’t exactly do much good for a team in a single-elimination tournament format. Cheatham doesn’t seem worried.
“I think this team is capable of accomplishing whatever we put our minds to,” he said. “We turn it up when (the game is on the line). When our backs are against the wall, that’s when we play our best. So, if we do get into the tournament, I think it’s going to be a show.”
“We all know how our season’s been,” Martin added. “In the big games, we end up thriving in -- and not every game is a big game. I’m confident in my guys as well to play the way they’ve been playing and I think that when the lights are on, we’ll show that we can play with anybody.”
In his two tournament games, last season -- a loss to Colorado in the Pac-12 Tournament and a loss to Syracuse in the NCAA Tournament First Four -- Martin learned what a March atmosphere is like. The lights. The energy. The way that everything just feels bigger.
Against Kansas, against Arizona (twice), and against Mississippi State and Utah State in the MGM Resorts Main Event, the Sun Devils showed that they can thrive in that type of an environment.
“The experience is obviously just one year of just going through it all,” Martin said. “But it helps a lot to see it.”
OTHER NOTES: -- Hurley said freshman forward Taeshon Cherry, who didn’t play against Arizona after getting hit in the head at Oregon State, practiced on Monday and is “trending towards being ready to play” in the Pac-12 Tournament.
Sun Devil Pac-12 Awards
-- Pac-12 Freshman of the Year: Luguentz Dort
-- First-team All-Pac-12: Zylan Cheatham
-- Second-team All-Pac-12: Remy Martin/Dort
-- Pac-12 All-Freshman Team: Dort
-- All-Defense: Cheatham/Dort
