TEMPE, Ariz. - After what some would call an embarrassing blowout loss to the Pac-12's second-worst team, Washington State, Thursday night, Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley didn't mince words in his Friday press conference when talking about the crowd and student section at the game.
The Sun Devils fell 91-70 in it's worst loss of the year, a week after beating rival Arizona at home in overtime in an electric environment at Wells Fargo Arena.
Hurley made it clear he was unhappy with the environment on this Thursday night.
"To have that type of lifeless crowd and low student turnout for a school that has this many students was disappointing," Hurley said. "Hoping that we can play a little better and maybe inspire a few more people to want to show up to watch our team play."
Hurley went on to say the team's play correlated with the crowd.
"I thought it was a dreadful environment, and our players played exactly the way the crowd performed in that game last night," he said.
Hurley noted the large turnout for last Thursday's game against Arizona and said a school the size of ASU should be able to get more than 700 students to a game.
"Very low response to a team that is having a winning season, a successful season, a team that's in a position to go to postseason," Hurley said. "It's important to have a good crowd and to have a crowd that's behind you when you're doing well and I believe we had won four of five and were playing pretty good going into last night's game."
Hurley said he would understand why fans would not want to show up on Saturday for ASU's home game against Washington because of the poor performance against Washington State Thursday.
"I feel like there should have been more of a motivating factor to show up and support us," Hurley said. "Now if you don't want to come on Saturday, I get it. I mean we were bad on Thursday, so if you don't feel like you want to watch that again, then I understand it...but we gave no one a reason prior to last night to not show up for last night's game."
Hurley said he was shocked at the crowd turnout when he walked out onto the floor.
ASU shot just 33 percent from the field and was 5-for-33 on threes and allowed 34 points for Washington State's Robert Franks. Hurley took accountability for not having his players ready, saying it's his job to make sure players are "jumping out of their skin" to play and the team didn't have that Thursday night.