No one is hoping that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas more than ASU’s head coach, Bobby Hurley, tonight. One week after a miraculous win over UMass-Lowell, Arizona State (2-2) played an atrocious game in the semifinal of the Vegas Showdown, as the Sun Devils couldn’t reach 50 points in a 77-49 loss. While the team will have a lot to learn from tonight, the following five points may be the most significant.
Without Shawn Phillips, ASU suffered down low
The word “suffered” doesn’t feel like it does justice to Arizona State’s paint presence against BYU. Without the length and athleticism of their 7-footer in the middle, who was recently announced to have a foot strain that will keep him sidelined for the foreseeable future, the Sun Devils were ineffective in the lane in all aspects from start to finish.
Defensively, in the first half alone, Arizona State was outrebounded 32-16, including a whopping 11-2 margin on the offensive glass. Overall, those numbers would read 51-32 in favor of BYU, alongside the 18-8 line on offense. Having finished the team’s first three games as its leading rebounder and shot blocker, the Sun Devils had no answers for the length and athleticism of the Cougars, as the aforementioned rebounding margins were joined by zero blocked shots by ASU and an 18-3 disadvantage in second-chance points. Alonzo Gaffney was limited in his chance to provide relief, as he garnered four fouls quickly and only saw 19 minutes, but his moments on the floor were once again subpar and overall unproductive.
If there was a bright spot, Bryant Selebangue put in 10 points with five boards, but even he was outrebounded by the 6-foot-tall point guard Frankie Collins. In the end, Arizona State was thoroughly outclassed by BYU down low, even though the Cougars’ offensive prowess was courtesy of the three-ball.
Three-point shooting remains a major issue
In this day and age, sharpshooters aren’t necessarily hard to come by, which makes it all the more alarming for an ASU team that went 2-20 from three-point range on Thursday, totaling a sub-30-percent mark through four games. It’s a far cry from the deep-range deadeyes such as Desmond Cambridge and DJ Horne that provided clutch treys almost on demand a year ago, and what’s even more alarming is the lack of improvement on the horizon.
Throughout last year’s late-season drive, Jamiya Neal stepped up as a spot-up shooter, and it was his shotmaking that propelled ASU in multiple key wins. While he led the team with 13 points on Thursday, his 1-7 sheet from deep was unlike what fans had come to expect from the junior wing, neither was his previous 30 percent clip entering the game. In conjunction with Neal’s struggles from beyond the arc, Kamari Lands, Alonzo Gaffney, and Zane Meeks went a combined 0-9 in that category. With Frankie Collins maintaining his offensive role as a facilitator, thus disallowing him the free reign to let one fly, Arizona State’s ability to rain in shots from 25 feet looks like it’s taken a drastic dropoff from last season.
ASU’s offensive structure is non-existent
Entering the game, the Sun Devils ranked 337th in the nation (KenPom) in effective field goal percentage through three games. That somehow managed to get worse on Thursday, dropping 11 spots nationally after the team shot 33 percent from the field, including 10 percent from three-point land.
Despite being a one-man wrecking crew at Manhattan, Jose Perez seems much less assertive with the ball in his time at ASU thus far, and the overall aggressiveness in the offense is lacking tremendously. Hurley has preached in the past his trust to give players the green light, but there is no knockdown shooter like a DJ Horne or big body like Warren Washington to dump it off to. Without those kinds of producers, the holes of an offensive gameplan that were plugged by those kinds of playmakers in the past are only becoming more glaring without someone stepping up to the challenge.
Like its loss against Mississippi State, disorganization and the lack of diversity in its sets doomed ASU on offense. From lack of off-ball movement to drawn-out possessions causing contested shots, there was an incredible lack of shot creators on the floor for Arizona State tonight, which kept them from getting the right shots to ever make a serious run at BYU as the lead ballooned.
Bobby Hurley is still figuring out his lineup
Even before the loss of Shawn Phillips to injury, Bobby Hurley still didn’t seem to have a set of lineups in the scenarios that required them. After the Umass-Lowell win, in which starting lineups for each half were adjusted, Hurley suggested it would be a plug-and-play method until something could be solidified. Against BYU, there was nothing close to a sure sign of what that structure could end up like.
In total, ten Sun Devils took the court on Thursday with several different five-man contributions that would offer little relief on the scoring and rebounding aspects. With just 17 points at the half, Bryant Selebangue came onto the floor out of the break despite not being on the floor to start the game, the same situation Kamari Lands found himself in against UMass-Lowell.
Now, without Phillips and Alonzo Gaffney in heavy foul trouble, Hurley was forced to get creative with the size he had at his disposal, which saw primarily offensive bigs in Zane Meeks and Akil Watson get extended runs tonight. With Phillips’s extended absence and Gaffney’s issues with foul trouble, the distribution of the frontcourt minutes is awfully unclear at this point.
Arizona State did not come close to replacing last year’s scoring output.
The heroics of Desmond Cambridge, the steadiness of Warren Washington, the versatility of Devan Cambridge, and the scoring of DJ Horne were all vital in getting Arizona State to the NCAA Tournament last spring. Having lost four of their top five scorers, including all of their double-digit contributors, the Sun Devils had their work cut out for them in the transfer portal. And at this point in the season, it looks like they failed miserably.
Even though the volume of scoring lost was notable, the individual numbers were nothing too eye-opening. For example, Desmond Cambridge led the team in per-game scoring but put up just 13.6 points per night. That’s replaceable. Now, getting a 20-point-per-game scorer like Hunter Dickinson or Max Abmas isn’t necessarily realistic for a program like Arizona State, but the coaching staff appears to have made some ill-fated choices in their new recruits.
Kamari Lands came into this game as the team’s leading scorer through three contests despite averaging just over 11 points per game. That kind of mark isn’t one you’re looking for out of a top bucket-getter, and Lands’s scoreless performance on five shots on Thursday only reinforced that notion.
Jose Perez, a later add out of the portal, took a major step back from a 20-point performance his last time out, tallying just three points on 1-5 shooting, including a 1-4 mark from the line, which contributed to a concerning 9-18 performance from the stripe.
Malachi Davis, who made himself a name out of the JUCO realm for his scoring explosions, took just one shot tonight and has scored just four points in the three games he’s played in this year.
Adam Miller was supposed to be the offensive headliner to replace Horne, but his waiver for immediate eligibility has not yet been ruled on by the NCAA. Thus, with that ongoing situation, ASU hasn’t been able to pinpoint a go-to scorer for the time being. And wth no signs of optimism on that front, ASU may be in for a very long year when it comes to offensive production.
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