With 23.7 seconds remaining on the clock, Alonzo Verge Jr. inbounded the ball to Remy Martin.

The senior Sun Devil guard kicked the ball over to Taeshon Cherry, who handed it off to Holland Woods, who in turn flipped it back to Verge, now on the left wing.

With 13.6 seconds and counting, Verge drove from the left corner to the baseline, drawing seven-foot GCU center Asbjorn Midtgaard and another defender to him. When Verge reached the left block, he slung the rock with his left hand to the waiting Martin, who had just received an excellent off-ball screen from Cherry.

Martin caught the ball in rhythm.

Having already put up a gargantuan performance against an Antelopes team that fought with ferocity from tip to buzzer, the Sun Devil senior just needed one more bucket to potentially have ASU’s prevail over it cross-town foe.

At the 11-second mark, Martin rose into his jump shot as GCU’s Jovan Blackshear Jr. lifted his left arm into the Sun Devil guard’s face. As Martin fell to the hardwood, the basketball arched through the air before finding its mark.

Splash.

Along with some great on-ball defense from Woods on the following possession to negate a buzzer-beater, Martin’s 23 point second-half explosion willed the Sun Devils to a dramatic win in West Phoenix, as no. 23 Arizona State (4-2) defeated Grand Canyon (4-1) in their first meeting as fellow Division I opponents, 71-70.

“It’s just his make-up, how he’s wired, his heart,” head coach Bobby Hurley said of Martin’s willingness to take late-game shots. “He wants those moments – there are certain guys who thrive in those moments and other guys who, for whatever reason, don’t handle them as well. He’s proven over and over again that he’s that type of guy.”

Despite emerging victorious, things didn’t necessarily go to plan for Hurley’s Sun Devils down the stretch as the squad was haunted by several of their usual statistical burdens: turnovers, rebounds, personal fouls and shooting inefficiencies.

In a first half that was plagued with slow, choppy and somewhat sloppy basketball, the Sun Devils trailed by one at the break. Hurley’s squad acquired 8 turnovers and 12 personal fouls and never really seemed to get in a groove on either side of the floor, as scoring droughts were very prevalent for both sides.

On the glass, an area the Sun Devils where have especially struggled, Arizona State was outrebounded for the fifth time this season by the sheer size of the GCU bigs. Jalen Graham and Cherry, who stand 6-foot-9 and 6-foot-8 respectively had their hands full with Midtgaard the seven-footer and Alessandro Lever, who stands 6-foot-10 and can shoot from range. ASU was outrebounded 17-14, though, a much better mark compared to the discrepancies from previous matchups.

“We wanted everyone digging and swarming to the ball, we were able to get some turnovers doing that in the first half,” Hurley noticed. “Just having more guys that are closer to having a chance to get a rebound is going to increase your chances a little bit, so I thought we were a little more efficient in that category today.”

As far as shooting goes, the Sun Devils hit a first-half mark of 10-26 from the field. Martin led all Sun Devil scorers with just 8 points at the half. Woods trailed Martin with seven and was the only ASU player to hit a three-pointer during the period.

“First half Coach was on me,” Martin explained. “He kept telling me I’m being too passive, and I wasn’t taking the shots that I should have taken. They were going under ball screens, and I had to make them pay.”

Martin came out of the gates flying in the second half scoring on back-to-back possessions. Throughout the period, the senior guard seemed to be playing on a completely different level, slicing, and dicing through the Antelopes defense before going to the rack, shooting a trademark midrange jumper, or dumping off a pass for an assist.

“Going into the second half (Hurley) got me to turn it up, but I already knew what was on the line,” Martin mentioned. “I decided to take it up a notch and be myself.”

“I wanted to get him connected to the game a little bit sooner, and I thought he might have passed up some things earlier in the game,” Hurley said of his senior guard in the first half. “So I was just trying to continue to talk to him about being a guy that could take over throughout the whole game.”

Martin’s second-half success began to rub off on his teammates too. Freshman guard Josh Christopher, who only scored from the free-throw line in the first half and missed five shots from the field, went 3-4 across the rest of the contest, hitting threes and midrange jump shots in transition. With 10:15 remaining, ASU had jumped out to an eight-point lead, its biggest of the contest.

GCU never stayed out of the fight, though, as Lever, the Antelope’s second-leading scorer since becoming a Division I program began to heat up on the offensive end as well. Blacksher Jr., who played high school basketball with Sun Devil sophomore guard Jaelen House and won four state championships with the ASU guard, began to find his rhythm as well. The duo of Lever and Blacksher Jr. combined for 26 of the Antelopes’ second-half points, but none were bigger than those that came in the final minutes.

With 1:34 remaining and ASU leading 68-64, Blacksher Jr. hit a second-chance three-pointer off an offensive rebound. Lever followed up with another on the subsequent possession, putting the Sun Devils down for the first time since the clock read 14:23 in the second half.

“They threw it inside a few times; they got their bigs going, they were hitting some threes late,” Hurley described of the late GCU surge. “We didn’t really guard the line in those situations (that) well. I thought our offense was pretty efficient, and I liked we executed on the last possession.”

In front of a raucous yet limited GCU crowd, the Sun Devils and Remy Martin came up clutch in the final minute of play, hitting a go-ahead three-pointer before negating the Antelopes’ chances of a buzzer-beater by inches.

After falling short against the No. 24 San Diego State Aztecs on Thursday, Martin, who finished with 31, explained how beating a team like GCU in close fashion can be the win that gets ASU back on its feet.

“San Diego State was a tough one; obviously we didn’t like how we played… we came into practice and started to move the ball and play harder on the defensive end,” Martin explained. “Coming into this game was very important because we knew what was at stake…as good as GCU played, we know we have to get wins like this…at the end of the day, I think that we are making good strides. I think that we can learn from our wins and just keep pushing.”

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