The 2026-27 season represents the start of a new era for Arizona State

(Photo: Jack Simon/WCSN)

Arizona State men’s basketball will tip off its new era on Monday night, when it welcomes East Tennessee State into Desert Financial Arena. For the first time in 12 seasons, Bobby Hurley will not be introduced as the Sun Devils head coach; instead, it’ll be Mesa, Arizona, native Randy Bennett, who returns to the Valley after an illustrious tenure at Saint Mary’s.

Bennett brings an entirely new coaching staff, a nearly completely overhauled roster and big expectations to Tempe. ASU’s turnaround from a middling Big 12 squad to the dominant entity many envision and hope for might not come overnight, but the foundation for the future will be laid during the 2026-27 season.

Here’s everything you need to know about this iteration of the Sun Devils:

Coaching staff – Harrison Fuller

Unlike many coaches bringing their talents to a new school, Bennett brings 25 years of experience, 12 NCAA tournament berths and seven conference titles from his time at Saint Mary’s.

Bennett’s signature slow-paced offense and grueling defense might not be flashy, but it’s proved to be incredibly effective.

Bennett’s Gaels consistently scraped the bottom of college basketball’s pace rankings. Since 2020, Saint Mary’s is in the ninth percentile of possessions per 40 minutes.

Despite the lack of possession, Bennett’s teams are still incredibly efficient scorers. Since 2023, Saint Mary’s has been in the 90th percentile for offensive rating — an advanced metric that measures the number of points a team produces per 100 possessions.

Alongside their offensive efficiency, Bennett’s teams have consistently excelled on the defensive end. In each of the last four seasons, the Gaels were top-six in the country in points allowed per game.

Bennett assured fans at the Sun Devil Basketball Block Party that his team’s defensive identity would remain through his tenure in Tempe, but did say that his hallmark leisurely-paced offense looks to change.

In ASU’s preseason exhibition against New Mexico, the Sun Devils scored 91 points, a mark Bennett’s team only hit three times last year.

Bennett said he hopes to “push the pace” this season.

Bennett’s signature slow pace might have stayed in Moraga, but the coach brings a quarter-century of strong overseas recruiting to ASU that has already helped him bring in eight non-American-born players to fill out ASU’s roster this season.

When Bennett was hired at Saint Mary’s in 2001, he took a chance on an under-recruited Australian guard named Adam Caporn. This risk turned out to be one of the best decisions Bennett ever made as a coach. Bennett has created one of — if not the strongest — pipelines between an NCAA school and Australian recruits in all of college basketball. Since bringing in Caporn, Bennett has never built a roster without at least one Australian player.

This year, ASU has three Australian-born players on its roster, highlighted by second-year guard Joel Foxwell. Bennett, in large part, has a member of his staff to thank for the Aussie outreach.

Ahead of Bennett’s inaugural season in Tempe, he reunited with a familiar face from his coaching past. Two decades after serving as an assistant on Bennett’s staff at Saint Mary’s, David Patrick joined him at ASU, where Bennett named him associate head coach.

Patrick stands as the only Aussie on ASU’s staff, helping Bennett deepen his ties to the land down under.

Patrick, born in Bermuda but raised in Melbourne, Australia, has coached in nearly every corner of college basketball. After starting as an assistant at Nicholls State in 2005, he worked his way up to be hired as head coach at UC Riverside in 2018. Six years later, after some assistant coaching stops in the SEC, Patrick returned to California to coach Sacramento State for two seasons.

Now, Patrick reunites with the man who gave him his second-ever coaching job.

Bennett’s ASU staff is full of former head coaches, one of whom brought his team to the NCAA tournament last year.

Rick Croy spent the last 13 seasons as California Baptist’s head coach. He now joins forces with Bennett at ASU, where he was hired as an associate head coach this offseason.

Croy led Cal Baptist to its first March Madness appearance in program history last season. He brings two pieces from his squad to Tempe: Second-year center Nate Garcia and fourth-year forward Jonathan Griman. Croy also united with his own son, JRob, a first-year guard who followed Bennett as a commit from Saint Mary’s to ASU.

Bennett’s first addition to the coaching staff after he announced his move to ASU was Joe Rahon, a former player and long-time assistant under Bennett at Saint Mary’s.

Rahon joins the Sun Devils’ staff under the same title he had with the Gaels, associate head coach.

The San Diego native played two seasons at Saint Mary’s, helping the school reach the NCAA tournament in 2017. After a brief overseas playing career, Rahon returned to Moraga to begin his coaching career. As an assistant (2021-25) and associate head coach (2025-26), he helped the Gaels to five March Madness berths.

Bennett assembled an incredibly experienced staff to help him ahead of his first year under the helm at ASU. Despite a lack of team chemistry, with ASU only having one returning player, the Sun Devil coaches look to help the program make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2022-23 season.

Guards and wings – Rees Goodall

Last season, fourth-year guard Moe Odum led the Sun Devils on and off the court in his lone campaign in Tempe. Odum led ASU in points, assists and steals, but his strength was pulling the team out of bad situations. Odum etched himself into Sun Devil lore with performances at the Maui Invitational and Big 12 upsets over Kansas and Texas Tech.

Odum celebrated Senior Night as a Sun Devil and, after the season, signed a contract with KB Trepca in Kosovo.

The NCAA then changed its eligibility rules, offering players five years of eligibility. However, the Big 12 instituted a rule barring players who signed professional deals from returning to the conference, causing Odum to enter the transfer portal.

Yet, even with Odum ineligible to play for ASU, Bennett seemingly did his best to include him on the roster. Not the actual Odum, but rather a guard who plays as if he were his twin.

Second-year guard Joel Foxwell is Odum’s doppelganger. Like Odum, Foxwell transferred to Tempe after playing in the West Coast Conference – Odum from Pepperdine and Foxwell from Portland. Both guards entered the Big 12 with questions about their size, as Odum stood at 6-foot-2, while Foxwell is only 6-foot-1.

The resemblance gets uncanny in the duo’s production last season. Both shot almost 40% from the field, averaged more than 15 points and had an assist percentage north of 34%.

In ASU’s lone public exhibition against New Mexico, Foxwell finished with 14 points on 4-of-13 shooting. Foxwell also tacked on seven assists, helping second-year forward Dillan Shaw reach 22 points.

Shaw followed Bennett from Saint Mary’s, one of two Gaels to ditch the navy and red for maroon and gold, alongside fourth-year forward Paulius Murauskas. Last season, Shaw began off the bench, but started the team’s final 22 games.

He earned WCC All-Freshman honors after posting 7.5 points and 5.4 rebounds per game, while shooting 41.6% from three. Shaw has a seven-foot-and-a-half-inch wingspan, offering him flexibility to guard players of all sizes.

Earlier this offseason, Shaw spoke about being more proactive with the ball in his hands, showing flashes against New Mexico. Despite playing all 40 minutes, Shaw finished 8-of-18 from the field and 5-of-13 from beyond the arc.

Fourth-year guard Emmanuel Innocenti is another addition from the West Coast Conference, transferring from Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s biggest rival.

Innocenti spent two seasons at Gonzaga, earning more playing time in his second. Last year, Innocenti was more known for his defense than his offensive production. In 33 games, Innocenti had a 1.5 offensive box-plus-minus and a 3.9 defensive box-plus-minus.

The Sun Devils kept only two players from last season – fourth-year guard Bryce Ford and third-year guard Vijay Wallace.

Ford was a key contributor, starting 20 of his 27 games played. He missed time to injury, but his highlight of the season came in the team’s trip to Hawaii, where he scored a season-high 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting en route to an 83-76 win over the Rainbow Warriors.

Five days later, against Washington State in the Maui Invitational semifinal, Ford scored 18 points on 7-of-11 shooting to clinch a spot in the tournament’s championship. After the trip, Ford reached double figures only two more times, but if he can build on those flashes, he could be a key piece to the Sun Devils’ three-point attack.

The two youngest guards are first-years JRob Croy and Jokubas Rudaitis. Croy is the son of associate head coach Rick Croy. JRob Croy committed to play for Bennett at Saint Mary’s, but decommitted after Bennett left for ASU. He was a four-star prospect and the eighth-best to come out of California.

Rudaitis is an intriguing prospect out of Lithuania. A left-handed shooter, Rudaitis represented his home nation at the 2025 and 2026 U20 EuroBasket tournaments. Before entering the college ranks, Rudaitis played for BC Žalgiris’ reserve team in the second tier of Lithuanian basketball.

Bigs – Zach Dworaczyk

Since 2020, only one center has managed to win the Big 12’s ultimate individual prize and take home conference player of the year honors in Kansas’ Udoka Azubuike. Even beyond centers, Texas Tech fourth-year forward JT Toppin is the only other frontcourt player to win the award in that time frame.

The trend aligns with the perimeter-centric, guard-oriented shift seen in the NBA during the mid-to-late 2010s, spearheaded by legendary players such as Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook and Arizona State’s very own James Harden.

Despite this, the game of basketball is, as always, a big man’s game.

While roles have changed, the sport’s height aspect remains prevalent, with rosters at all levels growing in size across the board. Bennett understands this fact and, in his first year leading the team, has compiled a jumbo roster with seven players 6-foot-8 or taller.

None may represent the ever-changing playstyles on the hardwood more than fourth-year forward Paulius Murauskas, who followed Bennett after two successful seasons at Saint Mary’s and is the “Crown Jewel” of the Sun Devils transfer class, ranking as the No. 10 transfer in 247 Sports’ 2026 Portal rankings.

Murauskas’s playstyle as a stretch big allows the forward to provide key spacing for Bennett’s squad, opening up lanes to the paint for his teammates to exploit. On the surface, Murauskas’s 33.3% shooting from beyond the arc may not seem impressive; however, the forward shot 44% on long twos and 84% at the free-throw line, indicating he’s a better spacer than the baseline percentage suggests.

One critique of the Lithuanian international’s game comes in the number of 3-pointers attempted. During the Gaels 2025-26 campaign, Murauskas attempted 3.3 threes per game, limiting how effectively he could provide spacing for his fellow teammates.

However, that wasn’t the story in ASU’s first open exhibition against New Mexico, where Murauskas attempted 10 shots from deep, hitting seven en route to a 31-point statement performance. Along with leading the team in points against the Lobos, the stretch forward also led the team on the glass, tallying nine rebounds, which is another strength of his game.

Controlling the glass is a cornerstone of being a big and an essential factor in winning basketball games. While Murauskas played a majority of his 2025-26 minutes at Saint Mary’s next to a center, the forward still managed to average an impressive 7.6 rebounds per game, including a 27.1% total rebound rate.

If the New Mexico exhibition is anything to go by, it is likely that Murauskas will once again get the opportunity to play next to a more traditional on-the-block big man, with third-year Boston University transfer center Ben Defty the favorite to earn a starting role. Defty himself is quite the force on the boards, snagging 6.8 rebounds and fueling a monstrous 29.4% rebound rate last season.

What Muraskas lacks in protecting the rim, Defty more than makes up for by swatting away 1.7 shots per game. Blocks are one thing when it comes to rim protection; however, Defty’s underlying numbers back up the big man as a stout defender in the painted area.

With Defty on the court last season, opponents of the Terriers shot 3.7 fewer attempts at the rim while shooting 9.5% worse from the field in the same area.

Almost an inverse of Murauskas, Defty has never attempted a shot from behind the arc, instead focusing on his interior game, where the German international averaged 15.1 points per game in 2025-26.

Off the bench, second-year center Nate Garcia offers a young talent who, despite playing an average of just over six minutes per game during his time at Cal Baptist, has the size at 7 feet tall to grow into a force on the interior.

In terms of size, no one on the Sun Devils roster stacks up to third-year center Filip Malesevic. Measuring out at 7-foot-3, the Serbian national is one of the tallest prospects to ever sign to play for ASU. Outside of his immense frame, Malesevic offers experience, averaging 10.2 points, 9.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game throughout his 2025 club season in Serbia.

After recently receiving a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction allowing him to play, California Baptist transfer fourth-year center Jonathan Griman is another international option to patrol the paint for Bennett’s squad. After playing sparingly in his first two seasons at the collegiate level, the Venezuelan international finally saw increased minutes in his third season, during which the 6-foot-11 big made a name for himself on the defensive end of the hardwood, as the Lancers saw opponents shoot 4.1% worse at the rim with Griman on the court.

Rounding out the bigs are two young Australian talents in second-year forward Marcus Vaughns and first-year forward Ajak Nyuon. Coach Bennett has long adored Aussie talent, and this roster is no different.

After redshirting his first year in college, Vaughns decided to pack his bags and head for the Valley in hopes of finding a role on Bennett’s maiden season at the helm in Tempe.

As for Nyuon, the 6-foot-10 forward boasting a 7-foot-5 wingspan offers a unique blend of frame and athleticism that leaves many wondering how high his ceiling can be if developed right.

Schedule – Bret Inman

A new scheduling approach is accompanying this new era of Sun Devil Men’s Basketball. The Big 12 is one of the finest conferences in college basketball, but non-conference games matter for bubble teams looking for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

For ASU to get back to dancing for the first time since 2023, it will have to win crucial games while taking care of the contests where a win is expected.

The Sun Devils start with five straight home games against mid-major opponents – East Tennessee State and Hofstra await during that stretch. ETSU won the Southern Conference regular-season title last season, and Hofstra ended its campaign falling to Alabama, 90-70, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Despite the lighter schedule on paper, these matchups pose a different kind of threat. Wins over ETSU and Hofstra would boost ASU’s NET ranking more than wins over teams like ULM and Oakland because of college basketball’s quad-wins system.

The system weighs results based on the opponent’s strength and location of the game. Home contests don’t boost a team’s ranking as much as a road game would, but ASU has an opportunity to pad its rankings before a gauntlet conference schedule.

Three more games that are prime opportunities to strengthen the team’s resume are against LSU and South Carolina at the Acrisure Series and Oregon State on the road.

The neutral-site games against SEC opponents during Thanksgiving week will be the first games played outside Desert Financial Arena. By then, teams will have somewhat established NET rankings, and these could prove pivotal battles for ASU and its tournament hopes at the end of the season.

After the 14-game non-conference slate, the Sun Devils play their first league game against preseason No. 25 BYU at home. The Big 12 has six teams ranked in the first AP Top 25 poll — second only to the SEC’s seven.

Last season, eight conference teams heard their names called on Selection Sunday, with BYU, the lowest in the Big 12 standings, still securing a No. 6 seed.

Why were the Cougars rewarded for a .500 in-conference winning percentage?

They topped Villanova, Missouri, Miami and Clemson before league play began. Those wins strengthened BYU’s resume, showing that a team in the Big 12 can be taken seriously even if it doesn’t have a winning record in the conference.

The other massive tests for the Sun Devils include No. 19 Texas Tech, No. 17 Kansas and No. 5 Arizona, all on the road. Assuming those squads continue their historic success, the Sun Devils could greatly strengthen their resume with positive results on the road.

In mid-March, the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City will host the Big 12 Tournament. It’ll be ASU’s final opportunity to propel itself into the NCAA tournament if it hasn’t already proved its worthiness beforehand.

In a matter of months, every test will have contributed to whether or not ASU hears its name on Selection Sunday in its first year with the new coaching staff.