DURHAM, N.C. — Bobby Hurley made himself college basketball royalty inside Duke‘s Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Jersey kid who became the All-America point guard for two national championship teams.
Moments from that journey — having his jersey retired, tense tussles with rival North Carolina, love overflowing from the Blue Devils’ famously rowdy home crowd — remained pristine in his memory. He wanted nothing to change those vibes three decades later, and that’s why he couldn’t help but feel some trepidation about his return Sunday night on Cameron’s opposing sideline with Arizona State in a charity exhibition game.
The good news was he found open arms awaiting him.
The bad? His Sun Devils were treated as rudely on the court by the seventh-ranked Blue Devils as he had seen so many visitors from his own playing days, at times leaving him helplessly calling timeouts to stop Duke’s romping second-half momentum in the 103-47 loss.
“All the other stuff was outstanding,” Hurley said with a frustrated chuckle. “It’s just, sometimes you should leave well enough alone or something. That’s why I never wanted to come back here. … We used to do this to everybody. It was a tough night, tough night.”
Indeed, the 53-year-old Hurley — who played his final game at Duke in 1993 under now-retired Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski — was left in the awkward position of savoring emotions stirred from his Duke return yet being flustered by Arizona State’s performance in a game he said was “littered with failure” for a team picked to finish 12th in the expanded 16-team Big 12.
“Hat’s off to where (the Blue Devils) are,” Hurley said, “and oh s— about where we are.”
The primary purpose of the “Brotherhood Run” game was to benefit the Duke Children’s Hospital, but the chance to reconnect with one of the program’s favored sons in Hurley became its own draw. The slender 6-footer still cuts a significant figure in Duke lore, from his No. 11 jersey hanging in the rafters to the fact he still owns the NCAA’s assist record (1,076) he set 31 years ago.
Hurley said Saturday he had been back to Cameron for a game only once before but “felt weird not being on the floor” and didn’t return.
“I never wanted to come back here because it was so good to me,” Hurley said then.
Cameron was good to him again — before tipoff, anyway.
Hurley received a rousing ovation when he emerged from the visiting tunnel, raising his right hand to acknowledge the cheers near midcourt before hugging current Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer. Then he joined Scheyer and Krzyzewski at midcourt for a pregame acknowledgement of the Duke ties had brought them together, while program and NBA great Grant Hill — Hurley’s Duke teammate for three years — sat behind the scorer’s table.
“It’s an honor to have Bobby back here,” Scheyer said. “I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I’ve watched college basketball. So to have that moment before the game with him and Coach K meant a lot to me, hopefully meant a lot to him.”
That tribute included a video montage of Hurley’s Duke days. There, on Cameron’s new midcourt scoreboard, images of Hurley’s youth flashed across the screen: him taking his undersized frame into the paint to finish against a defender, the fearless second-half 3 he hit that helped Duke ultimately stun unbeaten UNLV in the 1991 Final Four, images of arms raised in jubilation after so many wins and titles.
As the video played, Hurley and Krzyzewski stood side-by-side below, with Coach K wrapping his left arm around his former pupil’s shoulder to bask in those memories together.
Hurley played at Duke from 1990-93, guiding the Blue Devils to Krzyzewski’s first two NCAA championships in 1991 and 1992 as well as an appearance in the 1990 title game. Hurley was the Final Four’s most outstanding player in Duke’s repeat run, became an Associated Press third-team All-American as a junior and first-teamer as a senior.
“I absolutely loved coaching Bobby,” Krzyzewski said Saturday.
The trip had allowed Hurley to return to familiar spots, including Durham mainstay Bullock’s Bar-B-Que restaurant not far from campus for lunch and the chance to jog the campus golf course just as he did when he was a student.
He still wears his 1992 back-to-back title ring as a reminder of those days, though this time he arrived with family in tow that included his first grandchild — a newborn named Rowan — in a reminder of just how much has changed.
Reunion now past, he can turn his attention to fixing things for the Sun Devils before hosting Idaho State in their Nov. 5 opener.
“My granddaughter’s never going to remember this game,” Hurley said. “She’s 3 months old, thank God.”
