TEMPE, Ariz. — A dog wandered into Bobby Hurley’s mind. Got lost, immediately. Lots of wrong turns in there, he says.
Meiko is an Aussiedoodle. She stood between Hurley and his eighth season as Arizona State head coach. The 2022-23 opener was a few hours away, and he was ready to head out. But there was Meiko, his daughter’s pup — both of them visiting from out of town — parked in the doorway. Hurley, while being a tough guy and an all-time competitor, is also a sucker. He and Meiko play fetch. He sneaks her unsanctioned treats.
So the duel was on. Hurley vs. Meiko. If he wanted to leave for work, it was going to be through her.
Ultimately, drastic measures. Hurley sidestepped Meiko and left her behind — pouting, crestfallen — and set off upon his day. He left with the nervous energy of a new year. Arizona State was hosting Tarleton State, and Hurley was ready to throw himself into the 280th game of his college head coaching career.
That is, except he was stuck.
Meiko.
“Why is the dog blocking me?” Hurley, days later, remembered thinking, retelling the story. “Why doesn’t it want me to go? Is it the game? Is something wrong? I thought about it. Thought about the dog. That dog did not want me to leave the house.”
This, of course, sounds like the rantings of a madman.
“But these are the things I think about,” Hurley continued, laughing, sort of. “Now, I might take it to another level than normal people, but, yeah.”
Hurley shrugs.
“That’s a lot, right?”
This is what it’s like to enter Bobby Hurley‘s orbit. There is a certain mania to it all. A jet-propelled psyche. Can’t slow his mind down. Wants to, he says. Can’t.
That’s all internal. His demeanor off the court is cool, funny, damn near endearing. You might not know how fast that mind is spinning. But when it comes to the game — any game — then you know. Hurley becomes unrecognizable. This is the version the broader public sees. All piss and passion. One minute watching an offensive set, unemotional. The next minute, detonating, eyes bulging, arms flailing, shrieking for a moving screen. Last year, he was hit with a one-game suspension for berating an official after a loss at Stanford. His behavior was, in reality, not that dramatic, but he admits the penalty was “probably an accumulation of sins.”
Arizona State won seven of its last eight in 2021-22 but still finished 14-17 overall. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
Such a disposition is all Hurley knows. It’s in his genius as a player, in his genes as a coach. But at the same time, during a conversation in his Arizona State office last week, Hurley sounded a lot like a man entering a different stage in his life. Or at least trying to. Wanting to. He says he was thoroughly freaked out by turning 50 last year and has been hoping, for his own well-being, to ratchet himself down a degree or two. Sonic the Hedgehog searching for peace.
“Fifty was a scary number, man,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “I was really upset about it in the few days leading into it.”
A half-laugh.
“It just kind of hit me. You get this sense, like, things are starting to wind down. It’s a little bit scary. You start thinking. You get these big thoughts. In your life, have you done everything that you’ve wanted to do?”
So, how about that? A zen Bobby Hurley. Maybe it’s possible? It should be noted, in that season opener, Hurley imploded when a missed flop call and a missed foul call aided an early 12-7 lead for Tarleton State. The borderline tantrum was accentuated by an airy, three-quarter empty arena. But then Hurley capped it. Real quick. Coached his team. Five minutes later, it was Tarleton coach Billy Gillispie drawing a technical foul. In the second half, hardly a peep from Hurley toward the officials. (This is partially because his team was playing so poorly that he barely had any attention to spare for the referees, but nonetheless.)
“I’ve consciously tried to focus more on coaching and less on reacting,” Hurley said. “I’ve tried to work on it. It might not always look that way or appear that way. But I think I have grown to not focus on it as much and have done a better job.”
But there’s an issue. A certain incongruity. Hurley is trying to approach the game from a healthier place, but doing so while facing a season hogtied to the storyline of his job security. How do you take it easy when you’re in a hard spot?
It has to be acknowledged that this tenure has gone a bit awry.
First, let’s recall what was. Back in 2019, Hurley had this thing going. He was 73-58 in four seasons at Arizona State and fresh off a second-place finish in the Pac-12. His 55.7 percent winning percentage ranked second among ASU coaches dating back to 1923. (Only Ned Wulk, whom the program’s home floor is named for, ranked better.) The program was coming off back-to-back NCAA Tournaments for the first time since the early 1980s. Perhaps most importantly, Hurley was recruiting pros and filling Desert Financial Arena, a fusty, bygone building that’s overdue for a wrecking ball.
Arizona State, seeing other suitors lurking, notably St. John’s, handed Hurley a two-year extension, pushing his contract through June 2024.
Then came the 2019-20 season. The Sun Devils won 10 of their final 14 games and were projected as a No. 9 or 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Like many coaches out there, Hurley thinks his team might’ve made some noise in that 2020 NCAA Tournament. Instead, it never happened, and, as Hurley puts it, “It’s been downward momentum since then.”
The 2020-21 season began with high expectations bolstered by Remy Martin and Josh Christopher. It ended with a mess of COVID-19 issues, injuries, roster problems, little defense and less rebounding. The result: 11-14 and 7-10 in the Pac-12.
Christopher turned pro. Martin transferred to Kansas, won a national title.
In 2021-22, the defense improved, but the offense fell off a cliff, finishing last in efficiency in Pac-12 games. The Sun Devils began 7-15 overall and 3-9 in the conference, drumming up speculation that Hurley might be gone. Wins in seven of the last eight regular season games cooled the waters. Hurley was retained.
Now it’s 2022-23, and things are getting uneasy. Would Arizona State actually make a move if another season turns into a slog? Maybe. It’s not out of the question, despite 1) Hurley’s previous success, 2) problems with ASU hoops that go well beyond the head coaching position and 3) the unknown quality of any potential candidate pool. But this is the business.
“I have expectations for myself and, listen, I know where I stand,” Hurley said. “There’s a level of pressure to have to win. Of course. But I’ve always kinda felt like my back is against the wall, even under ordinary circumstances.”
The juxtaposition here is that Hurley has found in Tempe the unlikeliest home. In his heart, the man is a gym rat from Jersey City, N.J. Now, after spending eight years at ASU — by far the longest he’s lived in one place since high school — he and his family have planted some roots in the desert. He says the vibe out here has grown on him. He first began hiking in 2015. Nowadays, in his ongoing journey of seeking a ceasefire with himself, he says those walks are core to his self-reflections. Valley trails in Scottsdale, where the sun is somehow bigger, his Adidas gliding atop scorched sand. No phone. Just sky, air and land.
“You can just go and keep going,” Hurley said. “You can get up to 3,000 feet elevation. From the peak, you can really look, see the whole valley.”
It’s hard to picture — Duke legend Bobby Hurley; son of Hall of Famer Bob Hurley Sr., brother of fellow berserker Dan Hurley, pupil of Mike Krzyzewski — among the cacti and brittlebush.
He hopes, though, that somewhere out there, walking alone or alongside his wife, Leslie, he’ll figure things out. Learn more about himself, come up with this idea or that idea to win the next game, figure out how to turn around a program trending in the wrong direction.
A few days after this lengthy conversation, Hurley’s Sun Devils took care of Northern Arizona in a breezy win. A step forward.
A few days after that, they lost at Texas Southern — the fifth straight season to include a loss to a non-power conference team. A step back.
It’s his job to deal with it. Hurley admits being stressed to excess in recent years. He’d fly off the handle. Whether it was losing games, or COVID issues, or the officials, or negative energy around the program, whatever. It all built and built. Even minor things. He said a team bus arrived minutes late once and he “went nuts.”
“Look, I was pulling my hair out of my head the last two years,” he said. “It wasn’t good.”
Hurley described all this and seemed aghast. Aghast at himself. Aghast for getting so wrung out. So at 51, he’s working on it.
Maybe he’ll do it. Maybe he’ll walk through the door, not look back.
“This is what I’ve seen my whole life,” Hurley said. “You’re a product of your experiences, so I think that’s how I frame my style as a coach. I think my players feed off my energy. They know I’ll fight for them. That’s good. At the same time, I’m trying to communicate better, be better.
“You can’t change who you are completely, but you can work on it, try to get better.”
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos: Mitchell Layton, Chris Gardner, Steph Chambers and Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
