There is no program in college basketball that swings between "one great hire from waking up" and full teardown quite like Arizona State. The 2025-26 season ended with the teardowns winning: hours after the Sun Devils were pounded 91-42 by No. 7 Iowa State in the second round of the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, athletic director Graham Rossini announced that head coach Bobby Hurley's contract would not be renewed — ending an 11-season tenure that began with so much promise in 2015. The news, delivered on March 11, 2026, closed a complicated era. Hurley, the NCAA's all-time assists leader and a two-time national champion as a Duke player, leaves Tempe as the program's second-winningest coach at 185-167, behind only Ned Wulk's 406 wins from 1957-82. He took the Sun Devils to three NCAA tournaments — 2018, 2019 and 2023 — but never got past the first round. The final act had its flickers: an upset of No. 14 Kansas in Hurley's last home game on March 3, and a first-round Big 12 tournament win over Baylor. It wasn't enough to save a 17-16 campaign and an 11th-place finish in the Big 12, and Rossini moved on.
The replacement, announced twelve days later, is one of the most intriguing hires in the country: Randy Bennett, the architect of a quarter-century of Saint Mary's excellence, agreed to a five-year deal to coach in Tempe. Bennett built the Gaels into a West Coast power from 2001-02 on, compiling a 589-228 record with 12 NCAA tournament appearances — including five in a row — and a reputation as one of the game's premier program-builders. He turned down the UNLV job back in 2016 and spent a decade on nearly every power-conference search list, staying loyal to Moraga even as Gonzaga — his great rival — prepared to leave the West Coast Conference for the revived Pac-12. His arrival in Tempe is a genuine sea change: a coach whose teams are famous for deliberate, defense-first, efficient basketball, who has won everywhere and developed pros from Patty Mills to Matthew Dellavedova. If there was ever a moment to stop calling ASU a sleeping giant and start treating it like an awake one, this is it.
The history Bennett inherits is rich with peaks. The Ned Wulk era (1957-82) remains the foundation: Sweet 16 trips in 1973 and 1975, and a program that belonged among the West's best. The 2002-03 team built around Ike Diogu reached the Sweet 16. The Herb Sendek years returned the program to the tournament behind the most talented Sun Devil ever — James Harden, who spent two transcendent seasons in Tempe (2007-09) before winning an NBA MVP award. And before Harden, there was Eddie House, the most feared scorer in the Pac-10 at the turn of the millennium, who once dropped 61 points in a double-overtime classic against Cal — one of the great individual performances in conference history.
The Hurley era's best moments showed what Tempe can be when it all clicks. The 2017-18 team started 12-0 and reached No. 3 in the national rankings — the program's highest mark in decades — and back-to-back tournament trips with Luguentz Dort's ferocity leading the way proved the Sun Devils could recruit at a top-25 level. Hurley's sideline intensity, the former Duke star's fire, gave the program an edge it had lacked. The valleys were still there — the late-season collapses, the roster churn — but the peaks kept reminding everyone: when Arizona State is right, it's box office.
Desert Financial Arena — long known as Wells Fargo Arena, 'the Bank' — remains one of the Big 12's most distinctive venues. The students' 'Curtain of Distraction,' the 110-degree heat outside, the building going feral when the Sun Devils are good: Tempe on a big night is as fun as any building in the West. The move to the Big 12, now in its third season, opened a new chapter with new rivals, new stakes, and nightly competition that can forge a contender — if the contender is ready to be forged.
And then there is the rivalry that defines everything: Arizona, the blue-blood neighbors up I-10, and the Territorial Cup on hardwood — among the most lopsided and most passionate in the sport. ASU's best moments so often come at Arizona's expense, and the fanbase treasures every one of them like family heirlooms. A Bennett-led program that can consistently compete in this league would make that rivalry appointment television twice a year.
What defines Arizona State, even now, is the flash: Harden's brilliance, House's 61, the Curtain of Distraction, and the eternal belief that the desert giant is one great hire from waking up for good. In Tempe, the Sun Devils don't do boring — for better and worse. But Bennett changes the math. His teams don't rely on flash; they rely on system, toughness, and the kind of year-over-year continuity that turns programs into powers. The sleeping giant just got a proven alarm clock. The next chapter of Sun Devil basketball starts now — and for the first time in years, the smart money in Tempe is on the dream finally matching the reality.
