ASU makes NCAA case with solid win
After a lackadaisical showing on Thursday against Washington State, ASU men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley challenged his team, and Sun Devils fans. Both answered the call two days later as the Sun Devils surged past visiting Washington, 75-63, in Pac-12 play in front of a raucous 12,686 at Wells Fargo Arena.
With the Sun Devils’ NCAA Tournament hopes possibly hanging in the balance, ASU (16-7, 7-4) played with a sense of urgency with which it hadn’t previously.
Washington State was the 11th out of 12 teams in the Pac-12 and had not won a road game this season. What better way to restore order than to beat a team in Washington that had won 12 straight games, including all 10 conference contests in convincing fashion?
The Sun Devils came out hungry from the start and it showed.
“We didn’t want our season to go down the drain. That loss didn’t define us,” senior forward Zylan Cheatham said. “We want to use this as a building block, not as the high point of our season.”
The Sun Devils came out with energy, bolstered by the home crowd, a factor that was not lost on Hurley, who had some strong words 24 hours earlier about what he saw as lack of support from the student body on Thursday night.
“First of all, I thought the crowd was unbelievable,” Hurley said. “Let’s get back on good terms again. How the crowd got behind us was dynamic, really pushed us through that game in some tough stretches.”
And leave it to Hurley to employ a more unconventional strategy. A day after shooting 33.8 percent in the loss to Washington State, Hurley ran a practice in which the Sun Devils didn’t put up even a single shot. Every possession ended with a pass, some of those out of bounds.
Some players wanted to stay after practice and shoot, and Hurley kicked them out of the gym before they could do so.
“Remy (Martin) looked at Coach and said, ‘What do you mean we’re not going to shoot?’ “Cheatham said.
And yet the Sun Devils came out on Saturday and hit 29 of 47 (61.7 percent), their best shooting night in conference play since 2013.
“No, you all don’t understand. He’s a lunatic,” Cheatham said of his coach, repeating a phrase he used earlier this season after another unconventional motivational trick.
The reason for the high percentage – ASU had success in the paint and didn’t need to be content hoisting ill-advised shots from the perimeter where it has struggled much of the season. ASU penetrated Washington’s heralded 2-3 zone defense to the tune of a 42-20 advantage on points in the paint.
Rebounding, which has been one of the team’s strong suits, also loomed large as the Sun Devils finished with a 40-23 advantage there.
Sophomore forward Romello White did much of the damage, scoring 17 points and snagging eight rebounds before fouling out with 2:10 left and the Sun Devils up 67-56. He hit 8 of 9 shots from the field, the miss being his last attempt.
“They tend to spread out at the top to guard the perimeter, and that leaves it open in the high post,” White said of the Washington defense. “We wanted to feed it inside and go straight right at their chest.”
The strong performance came after White had to leave Thursday’s game after banging knees with another player.
“Today it still hurt a lot but I got through it,” he said.
The Sun Devils also played with energy on the defensive end and held Washington to 36.8 percent (21 for 57). The Huskies also had 17 turnovers. Hurley credited the defense freshman guard Luguentz Dort played on Washington’s leading scorer Jaylen Nowell who had 15 points on a 5-for-13 showing from the field.
ASU took a 34-26 advantage into the locker room.
The Sun Devils held steady and led by 18 at 50-32 after a bucket by White off a nifty pass from Cheatham.
The closest Washington would get was within seven points at 54-47. But the Sun Devils retaliated at their end with Cheatham putting down a dunk off an pass from Dort with 6:37 left that brought the crowd to its feet. The Sun Devils hung on from there.
White was followed in the scoring column by Dort with 15 to go with his five rebounds, six assists and three steals. Rob Edwards added 12 points and eight rebounds while Martin chipped in with 13 points and five assists. Cheatham also factored big with nine points, nine rebounds, seven assists and two steals.
ASU had 18 total assists on 29 field goals.
ASU now faces the daunting task of playing five of its last seven games on the road, beginning next weekend with games at Colorado and Utah. at them, go