In his weekly press conference on Tuesday, coach Bobby Hurley said he didn’t care who the third big scorer is from game-to-game outside of his star duo of juniors in guard Remy Martin and forward Romello White, as long as it was someone.

Tonight, nobody rose to the occasion in Arizona State’s (10-7, 1-3 Pac-12) 68-61 loss at the hands of the No. 20 Colorado Buffaloes (14-3, 3-1). Outside of Martin and White, the Sun Devils shot 6-for-35 from the field, including 2-for-12 from three.

“We do need some other guys to be able to be a little more consistent than they were tonight,” Hurley said. “We’re trying different things. We’re shaking the lineup up, we’ve tried to build them up confidence-wise and, you know, not a lot of follow-through just consistently.

Martin would lead the way with a 25-point effort, but showed the same accountability for his team’s results as he has his entire Sun Devil career, regardless of his stat line.

“I’m just disappointed in that I felt like I could’ve done more,” Martin said. “I could have got the team to a better start in the second half, and I feel like I let the team down, and that just doesn’t sit right with me.”

To his point, Martin shot 9-for-23 from the field, which includes 4-for-11 on threes, and made 3-of-5 free throws. He added seven rebounds, six assists, and a steal, but committed four turnovers and his -6 rating was in the middle of the pack compared to other guys on the team.

It certainly could’ve been better, but it was a very respectable performance especially considering White was the only teammate who helped him out on offense the entire game with the exception of a handful of shots.

Combined, the duo scored 44 of ASU’s 61 points—over 72 percent of the team’s total scoring output—thanks to White’s sixth double-double of the season, his first in five games.

“Mello’s been a beast throughout the whole season,” Martin commented. “We knew that he kind of had a mismatch, and we wanted to feed the post and let him work and get him in a rhythm and everybody else will feed off that.”

White got 19 points on 9-for-12 shooting, plus a free throw, and added 10 rebounds, three blocks, and an assist.

The absence of any help for such a strong performance by White, and what can be called a pretty good performance by Martin based on his lofty standards, brings to mind a comment Hurley made after a win, ironically, in early December against a lower-level mid-major school.

He said something along the lines of it doesn’t matter if the team has great depth if none of those guys play to their potential. This game was a perfect fit as an example of that comment, like an item of custom-fitted clothing.

“You have to trust what you have and the guys that are open to make (their shots),” Hurley said. “I know that (junior forward) Kimani (Lawrence) had one that went in-and-out on him and we had some good shots from guys that we would like to shoot, they just made more plays.

“I think the difference, too, is we didn’t really get to the free-throw line enough, and they outscored us by 12 at the free-throw line. We actually had more field goals made than they did in this game, so as bad as maybe I feel about our offense, we still were able to put the ball in the basket a couple more times than they did.”

Hurley would add that they can’t put too much stock into this game because they have another one in a couple days, and surely his team must appreciate his attitude—at least the way it’s publicly presented—amidst such a miserable losing stretch.

However, his remarks about the team’s field goal shooting are horribly misguided. Yes, the Sun Devils made three more field goals than the Buffaloes, but that’s because they took 18 more shots.

When all was said and done, the Buffaloes shot a respectable 40 percent on 21-for-52 shooting (7-for-18 from three, 39 percent), while ASU was a less than respectable 24-for-70, shooting 34 percent from the field (6-for-23 from three, 26 percent).

Much of this can be attributed to several possessions in which the Sun Devils were pulling in one, sometimes multiple offensive rebounds, only to continue missing until CU got the ball back (ASU won 17-8 on the offensive glass).

By Hurley’s assessment, he seems to believe ASU’s turnovers were an even bigger factor than the missed shots in the ultimate defeat.

“I thought we had our chances. I think really anybody had their chance to really take command of the game,” Hurley said. “We went empty and had some turnovers, missed some free throws and were never able to gain any momentum. And then I think a couple of our turnovers led to easy baskets for them and they kind of broke it open. We were fighting uphill from there.

“There were turnovers, guys leaving their feet and not having a play and passing it to them…the turnovers were something of a surprise for me, even at half to have nine. I think we could’ve been in better shape in the game if we took care of the ball better. When you have that many guards on the floor like we do at times, you would hope that that wouldn’t be a major issue, but it was tonight.”

In that regard, freshman guard Jaelen House was the worst offender out of anyone on the aforementioned supporting cast. He only took two shots, both misses, but canceled out his three rebounds, assist and steal with three turnovers and two fouls. Two of those three turnovers were passes that looked more like something you’d see in a rec game at the local gym than a Pac-12 contest.

As for the scoring, junior transfer guard Alonzo Verge Jr. and senior guard Rob Edwards stung the Sun Devils the worst.

Verge Jr. scored 120 points in the final five games of non-conference play, but continued his ongoing setback since the start of conference play with a seven-point performance tonight, shooting 2-for-13 with countless missed layups throughout the night. He has now cumulatively shot 7-for-37 and 0-for-8 from three in four Pac-12 contests.

Edwards was marginally better, scoring eight points on 3-for-12 shooting and a 2-for-7 effort from three, making last weekend’s breakthrough showing in Oregon look like an anomaly. As has been seen throughout the season, he has a huge role to play in the team’s success or lack of it. Tonight was an example of the latter.

“I was happy with our defense,” Hurley stated, one of many times he put an optimistic spin on things. “To start the second half, no one could break away from each other and they went on a little spurt. But I think it was more our offense and less our defense that had to do with that.”

Sophomore forward Taeshon Cherry (eight rebounds, two blocks, team-best +8 rating) and Lawrence (three rebounds, two offensive) were certainly helpful presences in the paint, which somewhat made up for their lack of offensive help. Cherry went 1-for-4, while Lawrence was 0-for-3, each missing a triple.

“I think he’s rushing a fraction maybe on his shot,” Hurley commented. “On the pull-up he had on the free throw, he really just kind of rushed it. Maybe take a half a second more in your delivery of the shot. But I liked his energy, his defense and how he rebounded. So, I thought there were a lot of pluses from what I saw from him tonight.”

Both players got into foul trouble though, with Lawrence committing three in 18 minutes on the floor while Cherry got whistled four times in his 27 minutes, having to sub out late to avoid fouling out.

Of course, all this begs the question of who should be expected to step up the most out of this flailing supporting cast? As this article implies—and as the two games prior to tonight suggest—my top pick is Edwards, obviously the most qualified to bridge the three-point shooting disparity.

But that’s not to say it can’t be Verge Jr., who’s flashed his potential numerous times by now, or even someone like Lawrence or Cherry, both of whom certainly have the potential and get the playing time to break out of their funk.

There’s too much basketball left to be played to throw in the towel on this team, especially considering the fight they’ve shown not just this season but in recent ones under the leadership of Hurley and Martin.

However, if this current course isn’t corrected very soon, it will begin to feel like a lost season.

ASU returns to action Saturday night when it hosts the Utah Utes (10-6, 1-3 Pac-12), which will break a run of three of the last four games against ranked opponents. The game will tip-off at 7 p.m. and air on Pac-12 Networks.