In what was the last regular season game in the Pac-12’s storied history, Arizona State (14-17, 8-12 Pac-12) fell to UCLA (15-16, 10-10) 59-47 on the road. UCLA snapped a five-game losing streak as ASU was swept by the Los Angeles schools ahead of the Pac-12 Tournament. Here are five takeaways from tonight’s loss.
Jose Perez’s absence hurt the Sun Devils
After coming off a 25-point performance in a loss against USC on Thursday, all seemed well with senior guard Jose Perez. That was until the shocking news broke roughly 45 minutes before tip-off against UCLA that Perez was not warming up with the team. After the game, head coach Bobby Hurley said that Perez had “taken a position overseas” and would be playing there for the rest of the season.
Perez in the building or not, ASU still had a very important game seeding-wise against UCLA, trying to earn a split with the LA schools for the second time this season. Perez’s 13.5 points per game would not be available as other Sun Devils would have to step up.
Unfortunately, none of his teammates was able to provide the continuous spark needed in what was a defensive battle, as both teams failed to score 60 points. Early on, the increase in touches seemed to be fruitful for guards Jamiya Neal and Adam Miller. Neal, in the first half, had eight points and was 4-7 from the field with two rebounds. Miller had 11 points with three makes from beyond the arc.
Down the stretch, though, in the second half, things went south for the ASU offense. As Perez is known for drawing contact and disrupting flow for an opposing team, shooting a second-team-best 73.8% from the charity stripe, other ASU guards could not replicate his play in any way.
Three of the ASU guards in the starting lineup who usually accompany Perez accumulated a mere 11 points combined while also only shooting 4-10 from the free-throw line. Ultimately, Perez’s absence was severely felt, and ASU will be hard-pressed to compensate for his offensive prowess now gone.
ASU continues to struggle against opponent’s frontcourt players
There was no question entering this game against UCLA; the main key would be to stop forward Adem Bona, who was a handful in an earlier meeting in Tempe. In recent losses, ASU allowed Braxton Meah of Washington to have a productive 13 points and 14 rebounds and Oumar Ballo of Arizona to have 14 points and 13 rebounds.
In an all-too-familiar scene, Bona had his way with ASU in the first half. The Bruins forward had 14 points in that period and was a perfect 4-4 from the free-throw line. The second half saw a smaller measure of success as UCLA’s perimeter shooting improved, but Bona still had six points and was 4-4 from the line again.
Bona set the tone and was the only Bruin through 75% of the game with a two-point field goal made, and Arizona State had no answer in containing the No. 1 threat for the Bruins, who down the stretch was finally complemented by the play of his teammates.
Sun Devils suffer devastating runs in each half
Yielding double-digit runs has been a painful, familiar scene for ASU this year its losses. UCLA came back from 15 down in the first meeting; there was the 13-0 run at Washington and the 13-1/13-2 runs at Arizona, which all doomed the Sun Devils.
On multiple occasions on Saturday night, Arizona State, the Sun Devils couldn’t take full advantage of the Bruins’ offensive struggles and allowed sizable leads to vanish quickly.
After taking a commanding 13-5 lead to begin the contest, UCLA went on an 18-0 run that gave them a 10-point advantage. ASU would go on an 18-4 run themselves to close the half, but it was another missed opportunity to bury the Bruins early.
ASU had a halftime lead of 31-27, and UCLA knotted it at 31 quickly. ASU navigated their way to a seven-point advantage (44-37) with 8:43 left in the game but saw their opponent erupt on a 19-1 run that gave them an 11-point lead, the largest lead at that point at 56-45, and a stench that effectively sealed the game’s fate.
UCLA had a head-scratching stretch where they didn’t make a field goal for over ten minutes in the second half and shot a mind-boggling 9% from the floor at one point during that period. On a night like this, for ASU to still come out on the losing end is inexcusable even though it showcased a reapted shortcoming that perhaps was seen as a matter of when not if.
Frankie Collins’s struggles doom his team
As any good business has a well-operating Chief Operating Officer, the same should be said about a point guard for a basketball team. As the ASU offense never found much rhythm tonight besides a 9-0 run in the first half and a 6-0 run in the second, it was hardly a smooth running operation by ASU on either end of the floor.
Frankie Collins is one of the most consistent Sun Devils, averaging a team-high 13.7 points and 3.4 assists going into tonight’s game. ASU’s leader, though, didn’t successfully guide his team to a winning effort, and one of his poorest games was certainly a catalyst for this.
A respectable 10 points evenly spread across the halves wasn’t necessarily a glaring issue. It was some of the other categories that came back to haunt Collins, who had six turnovers in tonight’s contest. This added pressure for an already depleted guard group to make something happen.
Besides the turnovers, Collins was 3-7 from the line. While this is par for the course with his 59.1% average, it prevented ASU from creating distance in the scoreboard with UCLA’s aforementioned poor shooting display in the second half. Once that door was swung wide open for the Bruins to enter and engineer a comeback, they gladly accepted that invitation and took full advantage of it.
ASU is now in a tough spot entering the Pac-12 tournament
With USC upsetting Arizona at home, beating UCLA would have given ASU a favorable matchup against Stanford as a sixth seed. Instead, with the loss, ASU is seeded 11th, its worst seeding since 2016. Going into Wednesday, it will face a very talented Utah squad aiming to get on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.
You might say to yourself, ‘The Sun Devils have handled business against Utah twice,’ but as history shows, it’s often hard to beat the same team three times in a given season. Utah is led by center Branden Carlson, who averages 17.5 points, so familiar struggles against an opponent’s frontcourt await the Sun Devils.
With the departure of Perez guaranteed to continue to be felt, the Sun Devils may find it impossible to come up with a solution in short order that can help them overcome that loss. And aside from that aspect surely affecting their psyche, their collective mental state of losing five of their last six games has them limping into postseason play. With all these elements in play, the faint chances they may have had of winning the last ever Pac-12 Tournament and earning an improbable berth to the NCAA Tournament are more than likely gone.
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