ASU fans remember with great fondness the ‘Guard U’ days from two seasons ago, and with junior forward Romello White leaving the game with 12:18 left in the first half due to a right ankle sprain, the Sun Devils were forced to resort to that style of play on Saturday afternoon. The tandem of starting junior guards Remy White and Alonzo Verge each scored 23 points, and along with freshman Jaelen House’s 20 points off the bench scored 66 of their team’s points in a wire to wire 98-81 win over Texas Southern.

With runs of 7-0 and 14-0 in the first ten minutes of the contest, the Sun Devils (9-4) showed no rust from their Christmas break, making good of their first ten field goal attempts and ending the first half shooting at a torrid 75 percent clip, while holding the Tigers (3-9) to just 38 percent.

More importantly, Arizona State showed, at least today, that they could successfully adjust without the services of a double-double contributor such as White, who was, in essence, was the Team’s MVP at this juncture of the season.

“I thought it was a good team win”, head coach Bobby Hurley said. “Obviously our numbers were pretty special in the first half and really put is in a good position. It’s a good sign that you can lose someone as significant as he is…I won’t say we didn’t miss a beat, we just have to figure out how to attack a little differently. Even though Romello will get so many points in the paint for us, we still had 50 points in the paint. That was via the drive as the defense had to respect us making the threes.

“It was important for us to hit a decent percentage from behind the line. It was great that we did play that way without having Mello.”

ASU was a near perfect 6-8 from beyond the arc in the first half, but shot just 6-17 in the second half, a period where they barely edged the visitors 50-48, after going down to the locker room with a 48-33 edge. While the Sun Devils naturally cooled off in the second half shooting just 46.2 percent, their defense regressed allowing the visitors to covert at a 50 percent clip during that period, bringing down the lead to as low as seven points near the midway point of that stanza. A quick 9-1 run by ASU pushed back the lead for good in the double digits.

As to the most burning question of the afternoon, the status of White’s injury has been described as “day-to-day” by an ASU spokesman and Hurley said that he would reserve judgment on his availability.

“It’s a little early,” Hurley noted, “and I will see how he looks in the next couple of days before I have any type of update on Mello.”

With White sidelined senior forward Mickey Mitchell who has been battling a severe back injury saw his best production and most extensive action in over a year playing 26 minutes scoring four points, hauling in four rebounds and dishing out two assists. Even more impressive was the contribution of his fellow junior forward Kimani Lawrence who had 11 points as a reserve and collected three steals.

After back to back losses to St. Mary’s and Creighton, ASU does end a challenging non-conference on a high note, which is important as the Sun Devils now face a grueling three straight road games starting with a visit to Tucson to face Arizona on January 4th, followed by a road trip to the Oregon schools.

“We have been to a lot of places and traveled a lot this non-conference,” Hurley commented, “and it was good to finish the way we did. Hopefully, that will give our guys some confidence. 9-4 is fairly respectable based on who we played and where we traveled.

“Now we get to move to the next chapter of the season.”