It seemed the decibels at Desert Financial Arena maxed out Saturday night when the PA announcer welcomed ASU football coach Herm Edwards to the game, prefacing the introduction with a reminder the Sun Devils took care of business in the Territorial Cup.
It took a second for the 65-year old to realize the scoreboard was capturing him and all the cheers, yeah, those were for him too. Someone quickly alerted him. He flung his head up and started waving his arms emphatically to a roaring crowd.
Then, because of course he did, the Sun Devils’ coach, rocking a gray sweater and backward gray Kangol hat, waltzed over to high-five and shake hands with the student section. In one timeout, the school’s best showman took over.
On the court, so did ASU basketball. The Sun Devils blitzed Louisiana, KenPom’s 262nd-ranked team, 77-65 to improve to 6-2. And, to ASU’s liking, there was no late-game scare, no need for a game-winning shot, as has been the case in a number of the Devils’ non-conference contests.
They dominated. They had 10 steals. They forced Louisiana into 20 fouls and 20 turnovers. In the end, ASU shot 22 free throws and had 22 points off turnovers.
It’s hard to lose a game when all those numbers point in your direction.
But that’s ASU’s recipe for success. Play fast, pressure the ball, force turnovers and score in transition. In some ways, it had to be foreign for Edwards, whose game plan on the football field is nearly the opposite -- run the ball and drag out the clock until the fourth quarter.
Both, in their own rights in their own sports, have found success.
On Saturday, ASU suffocated the Ragin’ Cajuns. Defensively, they were pests. Offensively, they kept it simple and funneled the ball down low at every possible chance. The formula brought out forward Romello White’s best game of the season.
The junior, who missed ASU’s first game in China due to a violation of team rules tallied 19 points and 14 rebounds on just nine shots. In the past, he’s been timid in the paint at times. Against Louisiana, he was efficient, showed impressive post moves and went to the hoop with authority.
“Good things happened when he had the ball, bottom line,” Hurley said of White. “He was one of the primary reasons we were in the position we were in at the end of the game.”
That quote was Hurley’s first of his press conference. It was also the only positive one he provided. Unlike Edwards, who stays away from calling out players or coaches, Hurley, it seemed, wanted to send a message.
On point guard Remy Martin, who had 15 points despite missing all five of his 3-pointers, Hurley said: “He has such a high standard with me that it wasn’t a good effort by him. He didn’t lead our team the way I needed him to. He wasn’t connected to the game the way he should have been … He has to improve and do better.”
On guard Alonzo Verge Jr., who has scored seven combined points in his last two games: “He’s too talented to be playing the way he is and he just has to stop thinking or feeling sorry for himself when he doesn’t hit a shot or whatever and just step up, be mature and play the way he’s capable of playing.”
On his team’s depth, something he raved about in his availability on Thursday, mentioning that he thought the San Francisco game was the first where he used a 10-man rotation: “If you have a lot of guys, that’s great. But if you have a lot of guys playing well, that’s really what’s good.
“To figure out how to find enough guys who are contributing and playing at a high level, then the depth is wonderful. But if you have too many guys that aren’t playing well, then what is it? You’re just playing a lot of guys who aren’t playing well.”
Hurley was ticked -- about all facets of his team. There were some rough patches, sure. In the second half, Louisiana and ASU tied and the Ragin’ Cajuns shot 18 free throws. But, most went unnoticed to the 7,685 on hand.
In the locker room postgame, White said Hurley told the team, “That we need to get better defensively and we have to hit shots … When we play teams that are better than that team, it’s going to be harder for us to stop them.”
The shooting part, that’s been an issue all season. Coming into the game, the Sun Devils were hitting just a third of their shots behind the arc. On Saturday, they knocked down just six of their 26 attempts -- that’s 23 percent.
Defensively, though, it seems Hurley could only have a gripe with his squad’s second-half output. Compared to the first period, it was lackluster. On one play, Louisiana’s 6-foot-9 big man Dou Gueye secured the defensive rebound, then drove coast-to-coast for an uncontested layup.
Seconds later, Hurley called a timeout and subbed the entire lineup out.
“Anytime that happens, there had to be someone between Point A and Point B to make an impact there,” Hurley said. “And when five guys don’t do it, then, in that instance, that was my call (to sub them out). I don’t do that all the time, but it was frustrating to see that.
In the last two seasons, it would be tough to recall a postgame presser where Hurley was more angry at his team. Perhaps this is his way of sending a message to a young group whose biggest challenges lie ahead.
Perhaps it’s a way of trying to prevent the Pac-12 play regression ASU has endured in each of the last two seasons.
Maybe he just wanted to wake his team up. Yeah, they almost beat Virginia, they defeated Princeton on a game-winner and they took down a good San Francisco team on the road. In the grand scheme of things, as Hurley has learned as the Devils have been on the bubble each of the last two years, the marathon is more important than the sprint.
Now it’s time to see if their coach’s wake-up call got the Sun Devils’ attention.
