Bobby Hurley took plenty of great memories away from his homecoming at Duke. The two hours spent on the court at Cameron Indoor Stadium, however, wasn’t among them.
“I had a really good lunch yesterday,” Hurley said. “Bullock’s Barbecue is fantastic. Saw Coach K last night, spent a good amount of time with him. That was another great moment. Ran a couple days on the Duke golf course. I used to run there when I played here. That was great.”
Then there was the game: a 103-47 Duke victory over Hurley’s Arizona State Sun Devils in a charity exhibition to benefit Duke Children’s Hospital.
“I’m not really going to go into a lot of detail about (the game),” Hurley said. “It was a train wreck.”
As Hurley fumed, his former college coach was not surprised over his former point guard’s mood.
“One: He’s got talent,” said former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “Two: He’s got fight. Three: He Prepares. Four, five, six: Do I need to keep going? He’s got it all. But the main thing is he prepares to win.”
Even in a preseason charity exhibition game that won’t count in anyone’s record?
“At that time, the StairMaster was the good thing,” said Coach K. “After every practice, he would go on the StairMaster for a half hour, 45 minutes, and try to break the record he had. He’d even leave notes for his teammates, ‘Try to beat that.’”
The return to Cameron was a rare homecoming for Hurley, who won two national championships at Duke from 1989 to 1993, finishing as college basketball’s all-time assists leader.
“I’ve seen one game here since,” he said, “and it was it was a couple years after I I left. I felt weird being here and not being on the floor. My daughter went to school here, my oldest. So, we were here for graduation and here for, I think, one of their Midnight Madness deals, but this will be really only the second time in Cameron Indoor since I left.
Hurley was busy coaching his Sun Devils when dozens of former Blue Devils came to Coach K’s final home game two years ago.
“We had a game that day,” he said, “but I was in New Orleans for his last game.”
Hurley has kept his Duke roots visible. He wears his national championship ring from the 1992 team, the second of the Blue Devils’ back-to-back titles.
“I feel like I get, I try and get superpowers out of it,” Hurley said. “It doesn’t always work.”
“It was special to me, to have people 30 years later still acknowledge what we did, and this great appreciation for great teams. … I’ll just remember last night with Coach K. We had a nice dinner, with some of our Arizona State people that came on the trip. He was very gracious to do that and talk about his experiences with me and also USA Basketball. Just spending that time with him was big time, because we had so many great moments, and he has had such an impact on my life in a positive way.”
Hurley’s son, also named Bobby, is a senior on ASU’s team and wears the same No. 11 as his father. The game against Duke ended with the younger Hurley on the floor, the first time a player of that name competed on the Cameron court since Feb. 28, 1993.
The elder Hurley tried to keep his emotions in check, however.
“As much as I’m nostalgic about being here—and this means a lot, and I appreciate Jon (Scheyer) and the Duke program for doing this—I didn’t need closure,” he said. “I think the way I left it was pretty good, but it’s just like another taste, another way to kind of say goodbye.”
It was also a way to expose his players to one of the sport’s legendary home courts.
“I just tried to tell a couple of our guys, you’re not going to be overwhelmed when you look at it when you walk in,” Hurley said, “but when you put all the bodies in here and the environment, it’s just a different level. I’m glad they get to get a taste of it.”
Unfortunately, for the coach who has to win every time he competes, the only taste left from the experience is a bad one.
“It means a lot just to have my kids here, have my granddaughter here. It’s not a lot of fun to be on (the visiting) bench, though,” he said. “My granddaughter is never going to remember this game. She’s only three months old. Thank God.”
