NCAA Basketball: Most overhyped power conference teams for 2020-21
Arizona State Sun Devils
We go from one Hurley to another when looking at the most over-hyped team in the PAC 12. Bobby Hurley, like his brother, is in the middle of building the Sun Devils into a national power, but there are some areas that need to be addressed.
Area one is the defense. Since Hurley arrived in Tempe in 2015, he has fielded one of the statistically worst defenses in the Pac 12 and in all of NCAA Basketball each season. While the last three campaigns have all resulted in 20+ wins the defense has truly held Arizona State back.
Area two is the key departures Hurley is going to have to deal with. Rob Edwards and Romello White, ASU’s third and fourth best scorers, are both definitely gone, and leading scorer Remy Martin (19.1 Pts, 3.1 Reb, 4.1 Ast) still has his name in the NBA Draft. Right now, he is looking like a back end second-round selection if that, so it’s a toss-up, but I think he will be back, and if true that’s a victory for the Sun Devils.
The third most important area of concern for the Sun Devils is team balance. In 2019-20 only four players averaged more than 5 points per game and only two have the possibility of returning in Martin and Alonzo Verge (14.6 Pts, 3.5 Reb, 2.3 Ast). Hurley brings in one of the top freshman classes in the country next season highlighted by the 11th ranked 2020 prospect in Josh Christopher and rounded out by two more top 30 recruits, Marcus Bagley and Chris Osten. Especially if Martin comes back they are going to have to fix this issue because the scoring and the ball are going to need to be shared a whole lot more and there will be a learning curve for everyone involved.
It’s never a problem when a decorated recruiting class is signed and getting Christopher was a huge recruiting win for Hurley, but the system he is coming into has some flaws. When you are as poor defensively as Hurley’s teams have been at Arizona State you better have a top 50 offense and last season the offense wasn’t consistent enough, ranking 104th in the country. The idea is that Christopher and his freshmen teammates can help fix that, but they are going to have to figure out quickly how to co-exist with the ball-dominant style of Martin and Verge’s games.
A new level of talent has arrived in Tempe, but if they do not bring enough to mask the defensive flaws that exist, they won’t be able to meet the preseason expectations that most have. The PAC 12 is going to be better than it has been in a long time in 2020-21 and the Sun Devils have their work cut out for them regardless of Martin’s NBA decision.