NCAA Tournament South Region news and notes: Two Hurleys, a unicorn and the Bluejays

A familiar face rolled into town about 4 a.m. Thursday. Bobby Hurley is here.

Actually, two of them. Bobby Hurley is the coach at Arizona State and Bobby Hurley Jr. is a sophomore guard on the Sun Devils.

Arizona State (23-12) earned a trip to Denver by winning in Dayton. The Sun Devils won a “First Four” game Wednesday against Nevada, rolling to a 98-73 victory. They then packed up and hopped an NCAA charter flight to Denver where they will face Texas Christian on Thursday in the South Region.

“Quick turnaround but I’m thrilled with the way my team performed in Dayton and the quality of the game,” said Hurley, who won back-to-back national championships as the point guard for Duke in 1991-92.

Hurley is now 51, with the graying hair to prove it. His son, Bobby, is a backup, a 6-foot guard who has played in just six games this season but did get into the NCAA win over Nevada.

“It’s been an awesome experience,” Bobby Jr. said of playing for his father. “It was an adjustment period my freshman year, just learning that dynamic of on-the-court and off-the-court. It has been a lot smoother this year. It’s always been a dream to play for my Dad.”

Coach Hurley said his team has traveled a lot of late but could overcome the fatigue, saying, “We’ll sleep in May.”

Lucky unicorn

The Pack’s Ernest Ross brought along the lucky stuffed unicorn he said he won at the N.C. State Fair. Not that he had to be all that lucky to win it.

Apparently, the 6-9 sophomore was playing the ring-on-the-bottle game and used his long wing span to reach out and have a ring end up around the bottle top. The kicker: Ross said he waited for the carny running the game to turn his head, reached out and placed the ring on the bottle.

As fast as you could say “We have a winner” Ross had a Squishmallow Unicorn — or at least it looked like one. He said Thursday he considers “Tommy” a good-luck charm.

“He came to Greensboro with me when we beat Virginia Tech,” Ross said Thursday.

Scouting Creighton

If you’re looking for a quick scouting report on Creighton, from a coach’s perspective, the Pack’s Kevin Keatts had one Thursday:

“We played two teams in our conference that I think Creighton is very similar to — Miami, who’s got great guards, who can really get up and down, and then Duke, who’s probably playing as good a basketball as anybody in our league.

“One of the biggest challenges is we’ve got to do a great job of getting back in transition defense. I mean, they’re elite in transition. They really shoot the basketball. Very seldom do you have five guys on any night capable of scoring in double figures.

“They have a great inside-out game. They do a good job of moving the ball around. They attack you off ball screens. It’s a really good team.”

Defending D.J. Burns

Creighton coach Greg McDermott was asked Thursday about the best way to defend the Pack’s 6-foot-9, 275-pound D.J. Burns. Like many coaches this season, he said it was kind of a pick-your-poison proposition.

“I thought there were a lot of ACC teams who had the personnel to guard him one-on-one, and it didn’t go so well for them,” McDermott said. “He’s very unique, his skill set. He has vision like a guard and passing skills of a guard. Not only does he get rid of it quick and get rid of it to the right spot, but it’s to the right place. He’s hitting guys in their shooting pocket where they can do something with it.

“You try to keep him off-balance. And obviously we’re going to try to make him play at the other end of the floor, too, as much as we can. D.J. scored over a lot of really talented defensive players, so it’ll take everything we have to try to keep him off-balance the best we can.”

Just a thought

Burns said he spent time Wednesday on one of the small rental scooters, checking out the sights of downtown. And that must have been a sight.

Never gets old

Creighton’s McDermott said one of the more exciting elements of the NCAA Tournament is heading over to the arena for the first game, with a police escort, with the sirens and flashing lights. It never gets old, he said.

“It’s pretty cool. It’s like it’s the first time, every time,” McDermott said.

The players are excited, no doubt. But is there a danger of being overly excited and making mistakes because of it?

“Coach has been telling us to keep our emotions in check,” Wolfpack guard Jarkel Joiner said.