With one second left on the Desert Financial Arena scoreboard, Arizona State fans began to pack up their things and head for the exits. Redshirt junior guard Luther Muhammad has just hit a go-ahead floater to put ASU up 65-63, and all things seemed fine and dandy in Tempe.

The referees met to delegate after Muhammad’s make and elected to give UC Riverside the singular second to cover the length of the entire floor and potentially win the game.

Junior UCR center Callum McRae inbounded the ball to senior forward JP Moorman II. ASU sophomore forward Marcus Bagley was the man assigned to guard Moorman, but instead of guarding his man, putting a hand up, and contesting the shot, Bagley lunged for the steal.

Moorman made him pay, heaving a prayer from the Desert Financial logo at three-quarters court. The basketball seemed to float in the air, time froze, and the Earth stopped rotating. Moorman’s appeal was approved, as the UC Riverside Highlanders shocked the Sun Devils at home 66-65.

After the game, Bagley called his steal attempt “the stupidest play of his career.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Bagley admitted. “It was an instinctual play, a stupid play. I should’ve put a hand up, contested the shot, but I thought I had the angle on it. I’ve learned from it now, but it was a stupid thing to do.”

ASU head coach Bobby Hurley, obviously unsatisfied with his team’s performance, also mentioned a timing discrepancy towards the end of the contest. Junior forward Alonzo Gaffney tipped the inbound pass, but the referees stopped the play to check how much time should be left on the clock. The officials spent a considerable amount of time doing so, allowing UCR to scheme up Moorman’s attempt. Hurley told reporters what the referees had told him at the end of the game.

“I think we had effectively ended the game,” he began. “Gaffney got a tip on it, and they threw it off of the kid’s hands, and it went out of bounds, but they didn’t get the clock organized. So, they kept resetting the game, and there you have it.”

“All the officials told me was that if I was angry, I should be angry at the scorer’s table for not getting the clock right.”

Regardless of the final moments, UC Riverside’s buzzer-beater encapsulated the overall ASU effort on Thursday night. Both Hurley and Bagley admitted that Arizona State hadn’t earned the win.

“I thought we deserved to lose,” Hurley said. “I told the guys that. Some guys did some decent things, but overall, we were outplayed.”

“It shouldn’t have to come down to that last shot,” Bagley agreed. “We were just flat the entire game… We deserved to lose that game.”

For nearly the entire first half, Riverside led the contest with lights-out three-point shooting. Arizona State only claimed the lead once across the first twenty minutes and held that lead for just over sixty seconds. The Highlanders were unconscious from range, particularly junior guard Flynn Cameron, who had 12 points on a 4-5 shooting clip from distance. UCR was 10-20 from three-point range, precisely 50 percent.

In all other statistical categories, everything was about even between the two teams. Shooting clips from the field, the rebound battle, assist numbers all stood about even keel. The only significant discrepancy were the marks from range, a point of emphasis for the team entering the contest.

“(Preventing the three) was one of our big focal points coming into the contest,” Bagley told reporters. “We wanted to run them off the line… We had no communication; we didn’t make the right rotations, including myself. We just have to be better.”

“They were cutting harder than us,” Hurley said. “They would get the dribble handoffs going, and we were forced to help, and they sprayed the ball around. We were not locked in defensively the way we needed to be to set the tone… We didn’t do our job early in the game, and that’s what led to the result.”

“We should have more urgency to close out harder and get those guys off of the line and make it tougher for them, but we didn’t do that. Some of it was miscommunication… Mental breakdowns. I just didn’t feel like we were locked in and ready to play from the jump.”

Arizona State was also plagued by their guard play. Toledo transfer Marreon Jackson was 2-7 with six points. Illinois State transfer DJ Horne was 1-7 with two points. The only guard who had an acceptable night was Muhammad, who is almost always a shooting guard and doesn’t run point. Muhammad was 5-12 from the field and scored the late go-ahead bucket, and even he wasn’t consistent enough to meet the standards of his head coach.

“Everyone has to look in the mirror after this,” Hurley stated. “The numbers say what they’re saying, and from what these guys showed through the summer and what they did in the preseason games has not carried over. We did not get great production from our point guard position.”

In the frontcourt, ASU was missing junior forward Jalen Graham, so most of the duties went to Bagley and super senior Kimani Lawrence on the wings, with Gaffney and freshman Enoch Boakye working inside. Gaffney had four fouls with just over 12 minutes to play, allowing junior big John Olmsted to get some work. Boakye had six rebounds but was 0-5 with a single make from the charity stripe. Olmsted had two boards and zero points. Gaffney finished with six points, three rebounds, and four blocks.

“Enoch had a few rebounds, but he had a freshman night,” Hurley said. “He had this freshman glaze to him, and we didn’t have any time for that tonight, so I had to go in a different direction. I tried to manage Gaffney’s foul situation, but you can see the difference when he’s in there, especially around the basket. He blocked shots and defensively gave us a chance.”

Some bright spots on the night were the performances of the two wingers, Lawrence and Bagley, who had 19 and 18 points respectively. Lawrence had a double-double with 12 rebounds. Nevertheless, their efforts were nulled after UCR erased a five-point ASU lead with nine minutes to play, capitalizing on mistakes and making the most of its opportunities.

While Hurley’s new look squad appeared sharp and fresh during the preseason, growing pains certainly remain after a mistake-ridden win against Portland on Tuesday and the dramatic loss to the Highlanders on Thursday.

“Everyone has a little bit of ownership with this one,” Hurley closed out. “I didn’t get these guys ready to play, and they weren’t playing coming out of their skin, playing hard. (UC Riverside) played harder than us.”

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