Arizona State athletic director Graham Rossini on Thursday was critical of how men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley handled Saturday’s loss to Arizona, which included a late-game headbutt, players sent to the locker room ahead of the buzzer and postgame comments that the Wildcats won “with no class.”

“No, it’s not,” Rossini told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo if the actions were acceptable to him. “We talked about it right after the game, and I know a lot’s transpired since then. I think coach had a chance to reach out to his counterpart at U of A the next morning. I talked to their AD right after the game.

“I understand tensions are riding high and emotions are very heated in a game like that, not the ending that we were hoping for. But we gotta maintain sportsmanship. That was a miss, he admitted it, we admitted it on his behalf as well and we’ve tried to do our best to move beyond it and get ready for this weekend.”

Rossini reiterated Hurley’s biggest focus was preventing further postgame confrontations, which is what the coach told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta on Tuesday.

Is Bobby Hurley on the hot seat?

The athletic director said by being in the performance business, he’s always in an evaluation process that includes frequent conversations with Hurley.

“He and I have that conversation off and on, what are the missing pieces,” Rossini said. “He’s our coach and we want to support him as we’re in the middle of the season. We talked yesterday and said, ‘Hey, we just gotta exhale.’ We gotta make basketball fun again.”

Hurley, in his 10th season, has the Sun Devils (12-10, 3-8) on a five-game home losing streak and outside of the bubble for what would be his fourth NCAA tournament appearance at ASU, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.

“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 said. “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.

“And we 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.”

Earlier this season, Hurley passed predecessor Herb Sendek for the second-most wins by an ASU coach (167-141, record-holder Ned Wulk was 405-273 from 1958-82).

ASU next plays in Stillwater against Oklahoma State (11-11, 3-8) on Sunday at noon MST.