To Rashon Burno, it’s so, so simple. He references the numbers. He plays the film on a loop. He reminds the Sun Devils at every chance he gets. The more they move the ball, the more they score. And the more they score, the more they win.

Burno, Arizona State’s Associate Head Coach, is responsible for tracking the Devils’ ball movement, the coach in charge of charting the data of ASU’s possessions. Burno watches the film and keeps tabs on the ball’s movement, relaying the according to shooting percentage.

So, for example, if point guard Remy Martin sprints up the court and throws up a jumper right away, Burno would chalk that up as no rotations. In essence, the ball didn’t change sides. So on and so forth, ASU’s assistant will mark up every play and note how many times the ball changed sides and the result of the shot attempt.

The results are striking.

“It’s alarming just how much better we are on offense if the ball changes sides of the floor a couple of times in the half-court offense,” Hurley said.

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve been keeping stats on that,” senior forward Mickey Mitchell said. “Coach Burno always reiterates to us when he shows us, he’ll show us if we move it once (around the arc) if we don’t move it. It just keeps going up -- the percentage of better shots we get and how many more points we score the more times we move it across the court.”

Burno pointed to the UCLA game as an example. It was one of the Sun Devils’ most effective offensive nights of the season. They shot 50 percent (29 of 58) from the field and nearly 60 percent from beyond the arc (14 of 24). And, to no surprise, they moved the ball.

Burno said that, during ASU’s 18-point victory over the Bruins, it scored 1.29 points per possession when the ball changed sides twice. Meanwhile, in its 17 possessions when the ball didn’t move around the arc at all, the Sun Devils scored only 0.89 points a possession.

Numbers like those from the UCLA game are reiterated time and time again from the Sun Devils’ coaches. Talk to ASU’s roster, they all know the facts about how much better its shooting percentages are and its overall offensive efficiency is when the ball is moving.

And when the ball movement halts?

“When the ball sticks,” guard Alonzo Verge said, “we lose.”

It’s true. Though it's not the best metric to analyze ball movement, the Sun Devils two-lowest assist totals came in their two worst losses of the season (40-point defeat vs. Saint Mary’s and a 28-point-loss at Arizona).

Burno compared it to a car speeding down the freeway at 100 miles an hour. Their exit is approaching in a hurry and they need to get over it. They’re switching lanes like a mad man. They’re out of control. It’s hard. It’s nauseating.

Same thing on the basketball court. When the game slows down, good things happen. More passes, more time off the clock in turn results in more people touching the ball.

And forward Kimani Lawrence, who has had a down year in his junior campaign, feels like the ball has energy. When guys get their hands on the dimpled orange leather, even if they don’t shoot it, they feel a part of the game. Thus, Lawrence argued, they play harder.

“We try to tell our guys through film and through practice like, ‘Listen, you can make the game extremely easy for each other if you guys do X. If you want a difficult game, take this route,’” Burno said. “And those guys have to make a decision on how they want to play.

“I think the last month, guys are starting to see, ‘If I do it this way, the game will come easy for me but also for my teammates.’”

For as much as Burno advocates for the ball to flow from hand-to-hand all over the court, he understands the challenge that goes along with it, why that maybe doesn’t happen as much as he’d like.

Hurley is an unquestioned player’s coach. Sometimes, some could argue, to a fault. He wants his players to have the confidence to take any shot in any situation. They have freedom. They have the green light. As he did against USC, if guard Rob Edwards pickpockets a defender and darts up the court, and the pull-up triple is open in transition, he should shoot it.

But, Hurley cautioned, freedom to shoot doesn’t equate as an excuse to not pass the ball.

“When we’re in the half-court, if we just dribble around and we make one pass and shoot, then we’re not doing our offense any favors. We’re not making our opponent work,” Hurley said. “So I think the stats have shown that when we do move the ball better, we generate better possessions on offense.”

The good news for ASU: This weekend extended Burno’s library of film to show the Sun Devils how good they can be. All the success they can have when the ball bounces around like a hot potato. In its sweep of the LA schools, ASU had arguably its best weekend of the season.

Against the Bruins, the Sun Devils shot lights out. Their numbers versus USC were a bit more turbulent. Even so, their possessions were impressive. The ball circulated -- both around the arc and down low to forward Romello White.

It felt like Burno’s message had clicked -- at long last. When someone checked in for ASU, they touched the ball. They were involved. They had fun. They played hard. They won. As Martin emphasized after the UCLA game: “When the team gets like this, man, it’s easy for us,”

Added Lawrence: “We’re starting to notice that when we’re moving the ball, we’re a hard team to beat. Most of our games when we win, our good wins, is because we’re moving the ball and sharing the ball.”