College basketball hot seat: ESPN insider reveals where Bobby Hurley stands with Arizona State

Arizona State is 14-14 overall and 5-10 in Big 12 play. Consequently, some analysts believe head coach Bobby Hurley is on the hot seat. On Wednesday, ESPN’s Jeff Borzello weighed in on Hurley’s future at Arizona State.

“Bobby Hurley’s contract is up after this season and all signs point to the Sun Devils moving on from him,” Borzello wrote. “They’ve been playing better basketball of late, but they’re headed for their third straight season without an NCAA tournament appearance. … When the dust settles on this cycle, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Hurley land on his feet closer to the Northeast.”

On Feb. 13, the Sun Devils showed life with a 72-67 win over Texas Tech, which was ranked No. 13 13 in the country at the time. However, Arizona State failed to build on its momentum, following the win with back-to-back losses against unranked opponents.

As Borzello mentioned, Arizona State hasn’t appeared in the NCAA Tournament since the 2022-23 season, when it was eliminated in the first round. In total, Hurley has led the Sun Devils to the NCAA Tournament three times, but never past the Round of 64.

ASU hired Hurley in 2015 after he’d engineered an impressive two years at Buffalo. Alas, Hurley has shown no signs of an impending turnaround at ASU recently.

Worse, Hurley isn’t exactly promising fans that better days are ahead. After ASU suffered a loss to West Virginia in January, Hurley claimed his team simply couldn’t win at home.

“We have not played well here in years,” Hurley said. “Like, since before COVID. We had this place cooking before COVID. Now it’s a sterile environment. We don’t win here. We don’t give our fans any reason to show up with enthusiasm to think that we’re going to win a basketball game.

“We have been dreadful at home for years. … This has been going on for a while. It’s not a home-court advantage. We can’t win here. Bottom line.”

Hurley didn’t stop there, either. In various ways this year, the 54-year-old head coach has repetitively stated that it’s too late for his team to turn their season around.

“It’s kind of too late to put things together, I would say,” Bobby Hurley said on Jan. 31. “But, more or less, we’ve been scrappy. We compete. We’ve beaten Texas, beaten Oklahoma, beat Santa Clara. Close games. Fortunate to win a couple of them. We’ve kind of done as good as we can do.”

Arizona State has three games remaining in its regular season. Two of those contests are against ranked opponents.