LAS VEGAS - In a Pac-12 Tournament that will be remembered forever as the last of its kind, Arizona State (14-18, 8-12 Pac-12) will be a mere footnote on the Wikipedia page.
Unable to recover all season from the fallout of a mass exodus from last year’s tournament team, adding ten new players among other adversities, ASU was dead on arrival in Las Vegas. Despite toppling Utah (19-13, 10-11) twice in the regular season, the Runnin’ Utes made an example out of ASU in their own March Madness push, ending the Sun Devil season by a final of 90-57.
“It was ugly out there for sure,” head coach Bobby Hurley said postgame. “we did not do a good job. This is not acceptable for what my vision is for our basketball program. We’re not in a good place right now. And it’s a terrible way to end it. And gotta get back to the drawing board.”
Following the premature departure of Jose Perez, who began his pro career earlier this week, none of ASU’s other star players left seemingly any determination to make it three straight over Utah. Keen on scrubbing arguably its worst blemish in a still-breathing at-large bid, Utah ran out to a scorching 9-13 start from the floor and never looked back. Running up the score to an insurmountable 47-22 line at the half, the Sun Devils didn’t have a signature Hurley halftime comeback in them, never threatening the lead in a pedestrian performance with their season hanging in the balance.
“Give credit to Utah,” Hurley noted. “They showed the type of postseason desperation that you need to have, and they have really good shooting. And we had a hard time dealing with their three-point shooting. That’s been how we’ve lost the last three, really. We’ve really not guarded very well, particularly from behind the three-point line.”
From the jump, the Utes wasted no time building a lead on ASU. Having been unexpectedly upended in both regular season contests, Utah ran out to a double-digit lead within eight minutes on hot shooting from Cole Bajema and Gabe Madsen. Most concerned with standout center Branden Carlson, the Utes perimeter shooters ended up being their main source of offense. Bajema’s four first-half threes and a handful of Madsen finishes at the rim would help the duo combine for 22 first-half points, matching ASU’s first-half total as a team. In fact, the Utes 47-22 halftime advantage would be the largest deficit ASU faced at the break all season.
With their flamethrowers on full blast and not letting up in a 59 percent shooting performance on the night, Utah continued to run up the score for all 40 minutes, with the final score just two points away from representing their largest lead of the night.
As the Utes rained in shots without facing the likes of Perez, who scored 47 points in the two wins over the Utes, the ASU offense was anemic. Unable to play through primary slasher, and with Utah’s fantastic shooting night keeping the Sun Devils out of the fastbreak, no offensive formula could cook up even an appetizer of sustained scoring.
“I think our construction of this team and how we played a lot of the year in a half-court offense was playing through Jose,” Hurley said. “He was one reliable post-up option where we could play some inside/out. And all we had was outside/in, and that’s what we were. So to have to rely on that solely was not easy.”
Another reliable factor let ASU down as well, in a rare case of lack of effort and desperation, in comparison to their opponents.
“It’s hard to game plan when us as players don’t go out there and play hard,” Frankie Collins said. “I mean, they can give us the game plan all they want. But if we don’t go out there and play hard and try and get stops -- if you saw the first half, every time you turned your head somebody was open. So you can’t really blame the game plan for that.”
Hurley shared this sentiment collectively, aside from one loyal exception.
“I feel bad for, number one, Alonzo Gaffney,” Hurley said. “He wanted to come back, and for him to kind of be put through this tonight to finish his career, it just sucks. So, I feel terrible for Gaffney. He was visibly upset about how we were defending in the first half. And just one of the few times I saw someone exhibit a lot of emotion.
Frankie Collins did all he could to spark runs with a team-leading 20 points, but a team shooting mark of 31 percent wasn’t nearly enough in support. Gaffney contributed as usual as a disruptor on defense, but foul trouble kept him from making a momentum-swaying impact. In total, Collins and Kamari Lands were the only Sun Devils to score double-digits on Wednesday night, while Utah saw four of its players reach that mark.
When the carnage was over, the Sun Devils had suffered their largest loss in Pac-12 Men’s Tournament history, tying the all-time record regardless of the team on top of that.
With the defining defeat, the Sun Devil season comes to an end much earlier than anyone within the program foresaw in the preseason. Even with the losses of key contributors up and down the roster, most believed enough remained for ASU to compete with, having been voted sixth in the conference’s preseason poll. Instead, the early unavailability of Adam Miller and never-ending injuries to various players derailed most hope from January on.
Now, nine seasons into his tenure at ASU, Hurley’s record stands at 155-131 with three NCAA Tournament appearances. Despite rumors of a potential career move, Hurley’s language in the postgame suggested his commitment to improving Arizona State basketball in its future endeavors.
“This is not a reflection of my belief system in terms of effort and will and knowing what it feels like when your season’s on the line, and you have to play for your season,” Hurley emphasized. “And that’s the effort that you get? So that’s my responsibility, and I failed miserably. So that will be a primary prerequisite as I start evaluating what needs to get done to rebuild our team. We’ve got to go rebuild everything. Just start over -- almost.”
Leaving the Pac-12 with their heads down, the program will turn a new chapter in the Big 12 gauntlet come November, a league where Hurley said that ASU would need to be prepared to face players who are “grown ass men.” Having coached through the Pac-12’s final days, ASU’s performance tonight shines a dim light for Hurley on the Sun Devils’ lasting legacy in the historic league.
“That’s going to be the lasting memory of us playing in the Pac-12, wow,” Hurley said. “That’s a terrible, terrible memory. And nine years of being in this league and coaching in this league, and it’s going to be gone, and that’s how we chose to go out. It doesn’t feel good.”
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