Tensions were already high at Desert Financial Arena before the game, but the 40 minutes after tipoff only added fuel to the fire. Both teams were jawing at each other with each made basket and the crowd that was split nearly 50/50 with gold and blue fed into it. As the game came down the wire with just a few minutes left, tempers that grew throughout the game finally broke.
Arizona (15-6, 9-1 Big 12) pulled away with clutch buckets down in the paint and key shots as they left Tempe with an 81-72 win over Arizona State (12-9, 3-7), but the final score was the least of everyone’s worries.
With under a minute left and ASU down 81-72, senior guards Caleb Love and BJ Freeman shared choice words before Freeman head-butted Love. The two were ejected after the exchange, and head coach Bobby Hurley ushered his bench into the locker room before the final buzzer sounded. He was worried for the safety of his players if a handshake line ensued.
“I had to make a tough decision,” Hurley said. “I thought it was in the best interest of our team to get them into the locker room so there would be no further incidents the rest of the game. I felt it was very heated, and there were possibilities that if we had a handshake line, something else could have happened.”
The thick atmosphere between the two schools had fans on the edge of their seats, but Hurley felt the way Arizona handled itself during Saturday’s game was unsportsmanlike. While he didn’t condone Freeman’s behavior, he knew the constant bickering between the teams would eventually end up in some kind of disagreement.
“There was relentless and constant chatter right near our bench,” Hurley added. “It came from a couple of Arizona players and it was not being policed properly. Of course, they’re going to be happy with winning, but it was done with no class, in my opinion. Words that were said back and forth led to the moment where Freeman lost his cool because of the constant talk that was allowed to go on.”
The game was tight from the start, as neither team led by more than seven until junior guard Jaden Bradley scored the final layup to make it 81-72. Both teams struggled from the field, shooting 37%, but the Sun Devils relied on their three-point shooting to stay in the game, going 12-34 from deep.
The Big 12 is a physical conference, and Arizona State has seen its fair share of that. The Wildcats got to the line consistently, even with foul trouble in the first half. Arizona was 21-21 from the free throw line before redshirt sophomore forward Henri Veesaar missed his final free throw attempt of the day to spoil perfection.
The Sun Devils average nearly 14 turnovers per game and have turned the ball over at least 10 times in every game this year. At the half, it looked like the Sun Devils would prove that narrative wrong with just five turnovers, but several minutes into the second half, ASU doubled its total to reach 10 after Arizona began pressing Arizona State. Still, the Sun Devils finished with just 11 turnovers to Arizona’s 13.
“I don’t want to have to diagnose every time why we lost,” Hurley expressed. “Eventually, you have to do the necessary things to win. It’s getting a little old to walk in here after every game and explain why we lost. Part of it was that stretch where we were up five and turned the ball over twice.
With the Wildcats dominating the paint throughout the game, ASU had to resort to its perimeter play. The Sun Devils were extremely stagnant in the first half, settling for pull-up jumpers with a defender in their face. Once they came out of the locker room, they started moving the ball around the perimeter and found their groove, finishing with 18 assists and 12 in the second half alone.
With the Wildcats suffocating Arizona State on the perimeter once ASU started making threes, the offensive aggressiveness of the players was nowhere to be seen. The Wildcats erased any weak drive to the basket with nine blocked shots on the day, but freshman forward Jayden Quaintance was one of the few to break through.
With Veesaar pushing him out of the paint, Quaintance took the initiative and barreled into the lane before finishing with authority over Veesaar. The freshman finished with seven points and eight boards, including two loud blocks that brought the crowd to its feet both times. With the intimidating factor on defense constantly looming, Quaintance has begun to tap into his offensive skill and is slowly making progress.
“If passes are being taken away, you’ve got to be able to win the 1-on-1 and get to the basket,” Hurley remarked. “That was certainly a great move by him, and it was a momentum play for us when we desperately needed it. I have to do a better job teaching my post players how to dislodge a player and move him under the basket.”
The Wildcats owned all the real estate in the paint, finishing with 32 points and 18 offensive rebounds. They not only led to 14 second-chance points but also allowed Arizona to kill more clock in the later stages of the game. The Wildcats' big men sealed Quaintance and Jihad whenever a guard drove into the paint, taking them out of the play entirely.
“It must be nice to have someone pave the road for you like that,” Hurley stated. “You literally just wipe out a defender and take him out of any help defense because it’s a moving screen. It’s allowed and has been happening way too often for me to say that it’s part of the reason we can’t get an offensive rebound or challenge a layup.”
The Sun Devils have just three conference wins after the opening month of Big 12 play, two of them against Colorado, which didn’t win a game in January. The narrative that the Sun Devils can’t finish close games when they hold a sizable lead in the second half grows with each game; an intangible a team needs to be successful in a Power Four conference.
Three of ASU’s next four games come against opponents in the bottom half of the conference, a golden opportunity for the Sun Devils to insert their name back into postseason consideration. Heading into Saturday, Arizona State was in Joe Lunardi’s First Four Out for the NCAA tournament and is likely on the outside of the bubble after another heartbreaking loss.
“You’ve got to figure out a way to win, and we just haven’t,” Hurley voiced. “We figured some things out on the road and won a couple, but we haven’t gotten it done in our building. You can’t lose four conference games at this point in the season and expect to be in the picture. A lot of these games have been close, and we’ve been there, but they’ve just been moral victories.”
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