November 20 marked a notable day on the campus of Arizona State, as its beloved Mascot, Sparky the Sun Devil, celebrated its 78th birthday. For a commemorating occasion, ASU basketball featured in a contest at Desert Financial Arena where mascots from across the valley visited Tempe to celebrate Sparky’s big day. Whilst gifting their mascot another tally in the win collum. Cal Poly received an offertory performance from the Sun Devils, as the Mustangs scored 89 points in a game that certainly provided anxious moments for the hosts.
Through six games of the 2024 season, Arizona State frontloaded its schedule with burdensome opponents featuring No. 3 Gonzaga in Spokane and neutral site games against prestigious mid-major programs Santa Clara and Phoenix rival Grand Canyon. The Sun Devils' three matchups in Desert Financial Arena thus far were designed to be straightforward victories, yet Wednesday’s 93-89 was anything for a cakewalk for Arizona State (5-1), scoring its highest points tally of the season whilst allowing its highest point tally of the season to boot. For head coach Bobby Hurley, a defensive waver was caused by a multitude of minor criteria.
“Not our finest work for sure,” Hurley said. “It was really our defense that took a step back, and we didn’t really guard them individually, off the dribble. We didn’t guard the line one-on-one they made some difficult shots certainly. Overall that end of the floor hurt us. We had different times where we got it to double [figures] where we could have taken control of the game, and then we let them get back in and keep hanging around the game.”
The Mustangs scored the ball uber consistently, utilizing a pace and space method to take shots almost exclusively at the basket or from three-point range. Shooting 50% from the field as a team, only Gonzaga had shot that efficiently from the field against ASU this season.
So, how did Cal Poly continue to score so fluidly? Off-ball movement is one of numerous answers to that complex inquiry. The Sun Devils have struggled in the 2024-25 season against teams that move the ball with vigor; the Mustangs' 18 assist charts as the second most assists they’ve allowed this season, once again trailing Gonzaga’s 22. Utilizing backdown cuts and pitch-ahead passes to score 38 points in the paint and 24 fast break points, besting the contest in both categories by significant margins. Despite having five players listed as guards in its starting lineup, they disorientated ASU through numerous points of attack.
“We got spread out,” Hurley said. “At times there was no recognition on the help side to rotate over at all, I know they had shooters, but we have to be in a good help position. We had too many breakdowns in that regard, we also were messing with those little ghost screens, they have where it's not really a screen, and then they’re slipping, and we have two guys going, and then someone’s wide open. So we got to get back to just our principles and being more disciplined at that end.
“I like their team, the kind of different style of playing; obviously the kid [Issac Jessup] could really shoot, and [Jarred Hyder] had a big night, just hitting shots.”
Hurley was accurate in his post-game discourse. Hyder went off, hitting seven shots beyond the arch en route to a game-high 27 points on 9-18 shooting. The senior scored 14 of his team's 38 first-half points before his teammates rallied together in the second stanza to score 51 points through astounding shot-making.
In the second half, Jessup shot 5-6 from the field for 14 points, hitting four three-pointers. Cal Poly ended the game with 13 made threes, the most ASU has conceded in any game thus far. To some, the performance was seemingly a one-off, a natural occurrence in a long college basketball season where a team gets hot and there is little that can be done to combat it. However, there are trends that lead to ASU’s awkward displays against less talented teams.
Offensively turnovers have been a real cause for concern, through six games the Sun Devils have had equal or more turnovers than their opponent in every game with GCU being a stand-alone statistic. This has led to teams scoring off turnovers and in transition at a higher rate than the maroon and gold. With just five points off turnovers in their season opener against Idaho State, just nine in against Cal Poly, and just 13 against St Thomas. Other teams are playing a more efficient brand of basketball than ASU, even in home contests.
“I feel like we just got to go and watch the film,” ASU guard Adam Miller said. “That’s one of the big things we do this season, too; we watch a lot more films. That's where you fix the little problems. It’s always the little things, at the end of teh day you got to go out and ball. You got to do your principles every night.”
ASU had given itself a taste of the lion's den to begin the 2024-25 season, where they’ve valiantly performed reshaping their own personal narrative surrounding the program cohesion and preparedness for a long road ahead in the gauntlet of a conference that is Big 12 men's basketball. With that anecdote in mind, matchups against mid-major programs are vital to a team's success as well, not only due to their being confidence boosters or probable ticks in the win column, but iron sharpening tests that expose any kinks in a team amour even if the favorde side still prevails.
“Teams like that, they don’t have as much talent,” Miller said. “So they got to do a couple things differently. At the end of the day, they’re still a team, so they’re going to be good at something, they’re going to be working in the summer just like us. So they came in and they did what they had to do, Kudos to them real fought game.”
The Sun Devils had endured a travel heavy start to its schedule, and with six games played they have more minutes logged than any other Big 12 school. Yet, now they have plenty of time to recover before their Acrisue Classic series in Palm Springs matchup with New Mexico on Thanksgiving night. For Hurley the added rest and additional time on the practice court will allow them to regroup and improve from their eye-widening struggles.
“I don’t like to make excuses here, but we’ve played a lot of games," Hurley described, "and some of them, we’ve traveled quite a bit, too. If you want to add the Duke thing to it, that’s a lot for a few weeks. So these eight days will be great for us. We have guys that couldn’t go tonight for some minor stuff that’s going on, and guys who just gutted it out. We could really use this next week to prepare for our holiday tournament.”
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