Bobby Hurley can’t catch a break.
Arizona State’s head coach and his team have lost seven of the past eight games, including a 91-81 defeat at the hands of No. 25 BYU Wednesday night.
The Sun Devils were quite shorthanded against the Cougars — their leading scorer, BJ Freeman, was dismissed from the team this past weekend, and a number of injuries and illnesses left Arizona State with just six scholarship players available to play on Wednesday.
To make matters worse, one of those scholarship players — guard Adam Miller — suffered two different injuries against BYU and would thus be limited to just 13 minutes on the court.
“I’m scared to wake up,” Hurley told reporters Wednesday night. “I hope I wake up tomorrow. I think I will, I hope I will, but I’m scared to to see what tomorrow brings.”
The Cougars shot 54.8% from the field and 50% from 3-point range against Arizona State, sweeping the season series after having won 76-56 in their first meeting on Dec. 31.
“When we played them the first time it was our first league game ... they looked a lot better than on film, and I saw a team that day that I thought would would be an NCAA tournament type team, and that’s what they are,” Hurley said of BYU. “They are strong, they are really good at shooting, they run good stuff.”
Despite the limited personnel, Hurley’s squad remained competitive throughout the night against the Cougars, ending on a 7-0 run as usual bench players hustled hard to make a good impression and try to up their minutes going forward.
With the win, BYU is now 20-8 on the season and 11-6 in Big 12 play. Beating the Sun Devils qualifies as a Quad 1 victory for the Cougars — their fourth in the past five games.
“(BYU is) playing very confidently, they’re a very good team,” Hurley said. “They’re older. They had a bunch of guys come back (from last season) and they sort of know each other very well. They trust each other, and they’re a very, very good team.”