Two Arizona State players suspended for Oklahoma State game

Bobby Hurley's short bench got a lot shorter on Sunday.

Arizona State made the trip to Stillwater, Oklahoma, without two of its top players — senior guards BJ Freeman and Adam Miller. Both players were reportedly suspended for the Big 12 matchup at Oklahoma State.

Freeman, who was ejected from Arizona State's loss to rival Arizona on Feb. 1 for headbutting Caleb Love, was reportedly suspended for conduct detrimental to the team. Freeman, a Milwaukee transfer, is Arizona State's leading scorer at 12.9 points per game.

Miller was ejected from Arizona State's 71-70 loss to Kansas State on Tuesday night. He was issued a flagrant 2 technical foul by official Tony Padilla with 7:34 left in the game and ejected from the contest. Miller got into an altercation with Kansas State guard Dug McDaniel right in front of Padilla.

Miller's technical was ruled a "flagrant 2 fighting technical" which is an automatic one-game suspension per NCAA rules.

Bobby Hurley On Hot Seat

Arizona State (12-10, 3-8) went into Sunday's game desperate for a win. The Sun Devils have lost seven of their last nine games and have fallen out of the NCAA tournament picture.

In an interview with Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo last week, Arizona State athletic director Graham Rossini made it clear he expects ASU to make the NCAA tournament.

“It’s an expectation. It's not a goal. It’s kind of one of those minimum requirements that we want to have tournament teams certainly in basketball, but in all of our sports,” Rossini told Burns and Gambo. “It’s my responsibility to look throughout the organization and figure out what are the pieces that we need to tweak and adjust and add to in order to have that kind of success. We’re not in this for participation trophies, we’re in this to win championships."

“We've gotta look hard at the reasons why we can’t be successful and look at those adjustments that need to be made, and there’s obviously a time and a place where we’re prepared to do that.”