Five Takeaways from ASU’s grounding loss at Washington

Basketball is a game of runs. Whether those runs last a few minutes or a few games can ultimately be the deciding factor in a squad’s season. While there are still plenty of games left in this campaign, Arizona State’s four-game hot streak cooled off in Seattle in a resounding manner as a talented Huskies (10-6, 2-3 Pac-12) squad outshot the Sun Devils (10-6, 4-1) in an 82-67 defeat for ASU.

Arizona State dared Washington to shoot threes, and it backfired

Coming into this matchup, Washington’s ways of winning didn’t come from deep. Ranked as the 139th three-point offense in the nation (KenPom) on Thursday, the Huskies looked like a much different team from beyond the arc than they have previously in this season, shooting an exceptional 52 percent on 25 tries. It was a far cry from a group that came into the night averaging a 34 percent conversion rate from 22 feet, and for Bobby Hurley, it couldn’t have felt good, considering it was ASU’s entire defensive strategy.

Sporting one of the most efficient defensive squads in the nation, Arizona State has thrived mostly off forcing turnovers and then converting those takeaways into points on the other end for much of its success this season. Against Washington, they still forced mistakes and capitalized off them, but when the stops couldn’t be generated, the Huskies made the Sun Devils pay. Missing their starting center, Franck Kepnang, ASU protected heavily against backdoor cuts, thus forcing more perimeter shots from the Huskies. Unfortunately for Hurley and company, shots fell like raindrops for the home team in the Pacific Northwest. Sahvir Wheeler, in particular, who was a sub-30 percent three-point shooter on the year, went a perfect 5/5 on the night, contributing to his game-high 24 points. Star forward Keion Brooks poured in 22 of his own on 8/11 shooting (¾ from three), and Moses Wood dropped an extra four treys to cap off Washington’s best three-point shooting night of the 2023-2024 season.

Even at full strength, ASU’s paint presence is still weak

While the bulk of Washington’s 82-point barrage came from the perimeter, the Huskies still played an effective game down low despite not having much size to work with. Without Kepnang, Braxton Meah started the game at center, and despite entering Thursday’s contest averaging just 3.6 points and 3.7 rebounds per game, had a field day with a fully healthy ASU frontcourt. Meah’s 10 points, all in the paint, eclipsed the totals of any Sun Devil forwards, while his 14 rebounds were double the amount of ASU’s leading rebounder, guard Frankie Collins.

Not only was Meah effective down low, but Washington’s perimeter players slashed to the lane with success all night. Like ASU, Washington plays a guard-driven style on offense, and without their starting center, it could’ve been highly exploitable down low. 13 threes don’t make matters easy, but 32 paint points from a depleted frontcourt against a full-strength unit aren’t very promising. Defensively, Alonzo Gaffney racked up four blocks, but his on-ball defense against Meah in the post was ineffective. At the same time, neither Shawn Phillips nor Bryant Selebangue could assist on the shot-blocking front against a smaller and quicker Huskies team. This also served true on the rebounding front, where UW won the battle on the glass, 40-29.

Despite streaky shooting, ASU is beginning to find offensive consistency

This notion can be attributed to any team, but Arizona State’s offensive inconsistencies have been the highlight of its season thus far. While their defense has carried them to most of their wins, in their four-game win streak, the ASU offense may have found their plateau from game to game, and it was exhibited even in Thursday’s loss.

Prior to their four-game win streak to open conference play, ASU had dropped three consecutive contests, and in the two games against high-major opponents in TCU and SMU, they couldn’t even reach 60 points. Turning it around with their hot start in the Pac-12, the Sun Devils bottomed out at 71 points in the victory at California while hitting the high 70s and low 80s in wins over high-scoring teams in Stanford, Colorado, and Utah.

While it came in a losing effort, ASU still managed a respectable 67 points considering its uninspiring 40 percent performance from the field, including an atrocious 4-17 mark from three-point land. Against Utah and Colorado at home a week ago, the Sun Devils shot 50 and 43 percent from the floor, respectively. When shots fall, ASU can top out in the 80s on the scoreboard. Even when they don’t, the 70s seem to be the basis, as the Sun Devils have won eight of their ten contests this year when reaching that range. To give themselves a chance in a game, that number seems to be the indicator, and of course, 67 is less than 70 and a lot less than the 82 Washington dropped on Thursday.

Rough shooting night, Washington’s defensive variations brought the ASU offense back down to earth

Running a guard-heavy lineup for most of the game, Washington head coach Mike Hopkins planned a diverse defensive scheme to try to find a defensive edge against a Sun Devil squad that came into the night on an offensive heater. Splitting his defenses between man and zone pretty much on a possession-by-possession basis, the Huskies kept ASU guessing offensively, and it could have been a real factor in a night where the Sun Devils had a lid on the rim.

Shooting just 37 percent from the floor in a second half where 16 points would outscore them, ASU couldn’t go shot for shot with the Huskies as they could in wins against Utah and Colorado last week. One could chalk it up to the road game atmosphere, but the different looks on defense on every possession likely threw the ASU offense for a loop in a half where ball movement significantly decreased, and thus, ASU couldn’t keep up with a Husky sled that was barreling down Rainier in a game-sealing 23-8 run in the middle of the second half.

This loss served as a wake-up call for an ASU team that needs to rattle off wins

In a script flip from a year ago, Arizona State stumbled through the non-conference slate this past fall and looked to be righting the ship with four straight wins in the Pac-12, quite the contrary from the nine out-of-league wins they stacked before January in 2023. The efforts of last year’s preseason, in conjunction with the caliber wins that came, gave ASU some breathing room in terms of an NCAA Tournament resumé to the point where the Sun Devils could afford a fifth-place finish in a four-bid conference and still get an invite to March Madness.

This year, Hurley and company couldn’t add the same prestige to their profile, as ASU went just 6-5 prior to conference play, including a 1-3 mark against NET Quadrant 1 teams. Winning four straight to start the Pac-12 season seemed to lighten the blow, especially in home victories against prospective tournament teams in Colorado and Utah. Still, with tonight’s loss to Washington, the chance to rack up quality wins has shrunk. UCLA and USC are on tap for ASU at home next week, but both of those teams have severely underperformed expectations and are far off the bubble at the moment. At the moment, only Arizona and Oregon present opportunities for Quadrant 1 wins, a key component for a team hoping to hear its name called on Selection Sunday. It’s rare for a power conference team with single-digit losses to be frightful of its status in March, but with a weakened Pac-12, ASU can ill afford a buildup of conference defeats if it wants a chance at the dance.

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