So, it took a 14-3 run down the stretch and two minutes and 28 seconds of shut-down defense, but Arizona State finally won a game on Thursday.
The 80-78 victory over the USC Trojans improved the Sun Devils to 18-6 overall, 6-6 in conference, and likely pushed above the NCAA Tournament bubble for the time being.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the notable numbers from ASU’s key win conference win:
~~~
.500: Sun Devils eye first Pac-12 sweep
ASU now stands at .500 in Pac-12 play, its highest win percentage since the beginning of the conference season. It’s yet to be seen whether the Sun Devils can string together two wins in a row, but to break even in league play is certainly a big step in the right direction.
“People are saying we’re a bubble team now, so every game right now is crucial,” senior guard Shannon Evans II said. “I know we’re at .500 in conference and we did great out of conference or whatever, but nothing matter anymore, it’s game by game. And that’s how we’re taking it.”
ASU will host another red-hot team, the UCLA Bruins, Saturday night. Getting that second win of the weekend was pretty much head coach Bobby Hurley’s only focus after the game.
With a victory, it’d be his first time sweeping a Pac-12 weekend since he took his current position ahead of the 2015-16 season.
“I’ve really put it behind me already,” Hurley said. “I don’t want to talk much about more this game. Other than, I’m just thinking about the next game now, I’m kind of done with it.”
3: Devils bolster résumé with Top 50 win
In defeating the Trojans (RPI No. 44), ASU picked up its third win over an RPI Top 50 team, its seventh over an RPI Top 100 team, and improved its record in “quadrant two” contests to 4-3.
More importantly, though, the Sun Devils beat a team that is widely considered a tournament team. According to Joe Lunardi, the Trojans entered Thursday night as a No. 12 seed, one of the last four teams in the field.
All critics aside, Hurley certainly agrees this USC team will be around in March.
“They’re an NCAA Tournament team, I think,” he said. “Again, one of probably the undervalued Pac-12 teams that people don’t think are as good as they are. They’re legit and I’m sure they’re going to win their games they need to prove that.”
Opportunities for wins against the field aren’t frequent in the Pac-12, as the only seemingly locked-in tournament team is Arizona. After UCLA, USC, and Washington, the conference’s potential postseason representation is bleak.
The Sun Devils will likely have just two more chances — at best — to defeat future tournament teams in the regular season. The importance of adding USC to that list — which, right now, includes Kansas, Xavier and potentially Kansas State — cannot be overstated.
18: Crowd energy, defensive intensity key late comeback
If it hasn’t been made clear yet, ASU is at its best when its defensive intensity is at its highest. The Sun Devils feed off of defensive energy and fast break opportunities.
It’s a symbiotic relationship with the crowd at Wells Fargo Arena. Good defense equals electric offense. Electric offense equals an electric crowd.
And an electric crowd just gets the Sun Devils going even more.
"If we can create turnovers and get in the open floor, I feel like it helps us offensively,” Evans said. “I felt like our crowd created energy so we wanted to play defense harder.”
On the night, ASU forced 18 turnovers and turned them into 14 points.
Four of those takeaways came in the first eight minutes of play, during which the Sun Devils held USC to just six points. Four more came in the final four minutes, as ASU ratcheted up the defense to help claw back and ultimately squeak out the victory.
“We went to kind of our zone pressure and made them work a little bit in the backcourt,” Hurley said. “Just getting stops, giving ourselves a chance.”
Other Standout Stats
50: Opposing big men haven’t exactly been ASU’s strong suit this year — Cal’s Marcus Lee and Arizona’s DeAndre Ayton dropped 23 on the Sun Devils, Stanford’s Reid Travis and Josh Sharma combined for 32 in Palo Alto, just to name a few. For the first 38 minutes or so Thursday, it seemed the same would be the deciding factor in another loss, as Bennie Boatwright (6-foot-10), Nick Rakocevic (6-foot-11) and Chimezie Metu (6-foot-11) had all combined for 50 points on 18-of-29 shooting from the field. Obviously, such efforts didn’t end up being enough to stave off ASU’s late-game heroics, but it still seems like athletic, versatile big men are a form of kryptonite for the Sun Devils.
43: Senior guards Tra Holder and Shannon Evans II were back to their explosive selves Thursday night, with Holder’s floater being the game-winning shot for the Sun Devils. The two combined for 43 points — their best-combined outing since tallying 51 in ASU’s win at Kansas — with 29 of those coming in the second half. Evans was also an impressive 5-of-10 from three-point range, with all of those makes coming after the break.
0: By going 0-for-6 from beyond the arc, senior wing Kodi Justice had his first night without a made three-pointer since February 18, 2017, when he shot 0-for-5 in a loss at Washington State. Justice finished with five points in Thursday’s contest on 2-of-8 shooting from the field while adding four assists and four rebounds. He’s been up and down from long distance throughout the conference season but maintains a 37 percent long-distance clip on the year.
