(Photo: Sun Devil Athletics)
TEMPE – Arizona State men’s and women’s basketball teams are attempting to forge a strong foundation for the 2025-26 season and beyond.
Neither program won more than four conference games in the Sun Devils’ first year in the Big 12, and massive overhauls have followed. The men’s side features 15 new faces, with only sophomore guard Trevor Best returning, and the women have a new commander in the form of head coach Molly Miller.
With so much change, both programs are back to square one. There are aspirations of winning on both sides, but to get there, they’ll each need to build a strong base consisting of one main ingredient: culture.
The two groups of Sun Devils flashed their new look rosters at their community event, Moonlit Madness on Friday night under the Tempe stars at Novus Place – an outdoor “innovation corridor” featuring restaurants and shops. Players competed against each other in knockout, a 3-point contest and a dunk contest, but it was what was said that was most intriguing.
“They’re a great group of guys,” men’s head coach Bobby Hurley said. “They like each other, they come to practice every day with a good attitude and work hard. I like what I’m seeing so far.”
Getting 16 college-aged kids from different walks of life and six countries to form a cohesive unit could be a challenge in some cases, but Hurley has assembled a group of young talent and knowledgeable veterans who are hungry for victories.
Not all growth can happen on a court, though. In order to gel together and create the culture that the group wants, they’ve needed to get to know each other and form bonds outside of a basketball setting.
“Surprisingly, it’s been really, really good,” senior guard and Pepperdine transfer Maurice “Moe” Odum said. “We do a lot of things off the court. We go get something to eat as a team. We might go out as a team. We’ll watch a game. We might watch a Fight Night.”
Odum – a Bronx native who embodies the role of a prototypical New York guard – is a natural leader on and off the court. He carried the Waves to a semifinal appearance in the WCC tournament last season off the back of 21.5 points per game and 9.3 assists per game when the lights were brightest.
Despite success in Southern California, Odum jumped at the opportunity to come to ASU.
“I always wanted to come to ASU since I was in high school,” Odum said. “I had a high school tournament called The Grind Session out here my senior year of high school, and we stayed two blocks away from campus, so I was up and down campus the whole week I was here.”
The desire to be a Sun Devil drove more than just Odum to the Valley of the Sun. 6-foot-11 Argentinian redshirt sophomore forward and University of San Diego transfer Santiago Trouet said he didn’t have to think when Hurley called him; he just immediately decided to sign.
Trouet has played basketball on three different continents: South America, Europe and North America. After already experiencing so much in his young career, Trouet is looking forward to helping mold the culture in Tempe.
“I like that we get to build from zero, we get to build from scratch,” Trouet said. “I feel like we’re all new, so we united pretty well the past few weeks. I think that’s a positive point, everybody being new.”
While the men’s team is forming a new identity around its new players, the women’s team has rallied around Miller and her leadership.
Miller has won everywhere she’s gone, winning the WAC with Grand Canyon last year and the Great Lakes Valley Conference six years in a row with Drury. She doesn’t just win, though; she does it with an infectious energy that her players have embraced and embodied.
At Moonlit Madness, her players ran around with a level of joy that’s been seemingly absent from the program in recent years. Much like the men’s team, it hasn’t taken long for the women – who have four returners and 10 newcomers – to form close bonds.
“We’re all bought in, and there’s nobody that’s on a different page,” returning junior guard Jyah LoVett said. “We’re so disciplined already, and it’s only going to get better. It’s so early, we haven’t even had any scrimmages yet. We’re for sure a good group of girls, and I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else.”
It’s thanks in large part to Miller’s meticulousness that the team is so disciplined at such an early stage. Miller employs a system she refers to as “culture checks” where anytime there’s a play in practice that isn’t up to her standard, she documents it on a Post-it note and sticks it to the scorers’ table. At the end of practice, the players have to run for each note.
“We want to be the best culture in America,” Miller said. “The standard is high and the expectations are high, but how that looks and feels, that’s culture. That’s your daily habits. Our daily habits need to be held to a high standard, and then the byproduct of that is winning.”
Winning doesn’t happen overnight, though, and Miller knows that. Still, she expects her players to give it their all.
“It’s not going to be perfect to start out,” Miller said. “But they’re going to play hard and you’re going to see that relentless energy and effort every time they step out onto the court.”
If the women continue to put in the work, and the men continue to buy into the culture that they’re building, success, on some level, could be similar across both programs.
