With just under 15 seconds remaining, graduate student transfer guard Marreon Jackson drove to the cup, surveying his options. Arizona State trailed Pac-12 foe Oregon by one point in overtime, and the Sun Devils, who had scored just 29 points in an abysmal loss to Washington State four days earlier, were looking for one final bucket to put the Ducks away in a statement win in Eugene.
Jackson drove to the left side of the basket and was smothered by his defender and a closing Oregon big man. The guard leaped into the air under the rim and chucked the ball to the hot hand of sophomore transfer guard DJ Horne, who had made the game-tying three-pointer to send the contest to overtime. Instead of shooting, Horne made an unselfish extra pass to ASU’s other sophomore transfer guard, Jay Heath.
With lethal intention, Heath caught the ball in rhythm and rose into his jump shot motion, and fired from the right-side wing with 12 seconds on the clock.
Nothing but net.
Heath’s overtime dagger gave Arizona State a two-point lead of which it would not relinquish, as the Sun Devils knocked off the Ducks for the first time in Eugene since Jan. 1, 2011, by the score of 69-67.
From the tip, it was evident that the Arizona State team that showed up in Oregon was not the same from Wednesday night against the Cougars at Desert Financial Arena in Tempe, and that was largely due to the hot hand of Horne, ASU’s leading scorer in both games played this week.
Horne had 10 of ASU’s first 21 points and finished the first half with 12 on 5-7 shooting. He added 11 more in the second half, including a monster game-tying three on the most dramatic of plays to send the contest to overtime.
Heath received a pass from redshirt junior transfer guard Luther Muhammad and fired a three from the right-side corner, but it clanged off the rim. Junior forward Jalen Graham frantically grabbed the rebound with eight seconds to play and scrambled back behind the arc to make separation and find a teammate to pass to. He got his answer in Horne, cutting from right to left. Horne caught the pass and fired with two Duck defenders in his face. He nailed it with just three and a half seconds left.
With Horne leading the way, the Sun Devils lead for the majority of the first half. Super senior forward Kimani Lawrence and junior transfer forward Alonzo Gaffney each contributed two buckets and handled a good amount of the glass cleaning.
Yet, at the halfway mark, Oregon clawed its way back into the contest, embarking on a 13-3 run, which saw the Ducks come back from nine points down to take the lead for roughly 30 seconds. The Ducks got the lead back again with two minutes remaining in the first half and went into the locker room ahead by one.
The second half was not so straightforward. Arizona State came out riding the shooting of Horne and close-range buckets from Lawrence to regain the lead but conceded it right back to Oregon as sophomore center Franck Kepnang and junior guard Rivaldo Soares, both typical bench players for the Ducks, took over. Kepnang scored six points, making two of three shots from the field, and cleaned up three boards. Soares had nine points on 4-5 shooting, also with a trio of rebounds.
With 10 minutes to play, Oregon looked to put Arizona State down with a 9-3 run, giving the Ducks a four-point advantage. Horne refused to let Oregon fly away, though, as his smooth jumper allowed the rock to keep tickling the twine with the clock trickling down.
A significant factor in Oregon’s inability to escape Arizona State was the performance of senior guard Will Richardson. Averaging 11 points a game, Richardson scored 17 against UC Riverside on Wednesday but couldn’t even buy a basket against ASU, scoring eight points on 2-14 shooting and a 1-9 clip from three. He had seven assists to combat his slow night. His backcourt mate, junior Oklahoma transfer guard De’Vion Harmon struggled equally, going 3-12 from range.
Oregon was 4-22 from three-point range, easily its worst shooting performance from range this season. Arizona State was lively on defense but left a lot of open shots on the table for the Ducks, of which they did not convert.
The Sun Devils looked much-improved on offense, putting together its third-best shooting performance aside from its other two wins against Portland and North Florida. The offense flowed, and the players weren’t afraid to make the extra pass, which is reflected in the stat sheet compared to the previous two contests. In ASU’s final game in Atlantis against Loyola-Chicago, the team had five assists total. Against Washington State, it had six. Against Oregon, Arizona State had 16, more than the previous two contests combined.
ASU also rebounded the ball well, only losing the battle of the boards by one, a margin of 36-35. Turnovers remain an issue, though, as the team gave the ball away 16 times, the second-highest number this season.
The overtime win marks Hurley’s first win in Eugene across his seven-year tenure in Tempe and puts a five-game losing streak to bed. Next, the Sun Devils will take on cross-town rival Grand Canyon University on Thursday in what is sure to be a loud, dramatic non-conference contest at Desert Financial Arena.
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