You are Arizona State athletics director Graham Rossini, more of a forward-thinking sports executive than a classic campus administrator. The Sun Devils basketball team have just staggered through another middling season, missing the NCAA tournament for a third straight year. You’ve just fired coach Bobby Hurley, but the vacancy isn’t what anyone in the sport would call coveted – not compared to a blue-blood program like Duke or Kentucky, or even the cross-state rival Arizona Wildcats men’s basketball, standard-bearer of the old Pac-10.
You could hire another hardwood hero like Hurley, a Duke Blue Devils men’s basketball supervillain whose winning pedigree as a player surfaced only in flashes over 11 uneven years on the sideline. You could turn to a television retread, someone angling for a return to the bench and a larger stage. You could give some young striver a big break. Or you could do something else entirely – something big and bold: You could give Percy Robert Miller a shot.
