With five minutes left to play in its final regular-season game, Arizona State (14-16, 10-10 Pac-12) led Stanford (15-15, 9-11 Pac-12) by two. Stanford senior forward Jaiden Delaire handled the ball across the lane, going from right to left, and looked to put up a shot with the left hand on the blocks. ASU junior forward Jalen Graham met him at his apex, swatting the ball towards the ground into the hands of the lightning-quick graduate guard Marreon Jackson.
At full sprint, Jackson covered the floor in no time, laying the rock up and in. An ensuing floater from sophomore guard DJ Horne put Arizona State up by six. Stanford had fought valiantly, but with the crowd surging and the Sun Devils firing on all cylinders, there was nothing the Cardinal could do but watch.
It was a minor tidal wave compared to the mighty surge this ASU team has encountered over the past month. Arizona State grabbed its seventh win in its last eight tries, defeating Stanford 65-56 at Desert Financial Arena on Senior Day.
“I have tremendous belief in them,” ASU head coach Bobby Hurley said of his team heading into the Pac-12 Tournament on its hot streak. “What we have been able to do is pretty remarkable considering where we were and just how tough this league is, especially at the top this year.”
Exactly a month ago, on Feb. 5, Arizona State was 2-6 in conference play, going into a matchup at home with then-No. 3 UCLA. The Sun Devils fought tooth and nail with the Bruins for 55 hard minutes of basketball, eventually besting them in triple overtime. Next came a pair of losses to No. 2 Arizona and Washington. Then Hurley’s magic began to stick precisely a week later against Washington State in Pullman. Seven wins in eight games, the only loss a 14-point affair to UCLA on a rescheduled Monday contest in Los Angeles.
“After the Oregon sweep (three wins into the turnaround), I talked to the guys about trying to win every game,” Hurley said. “And the more we win, the less likelihood we will find a way to lose. We were up (double digits) in some games recently. This game was more of a back and forth, tighter game, and I think that will be helpful for us in the postseason.”
“Rarely do you just go in and hammer someone (in the postseason); I think it was better we played this type of game.”
In the first half, it was apparent that Stanford wasn’t going to let ASU have this one easy, as Stanford junior forward Spencer Jones was unconscious from the field. He made all three of his first attempts from distance in the first two and a half minutes. Through the first 10 minutes, Stanford led by nine and were 8-for-10 from the field and 4-for-5 from three.
Nevertheless, the Sun Devils buckled down and, despite a few scoring droughts, managed to trail by one possession going into the halftime break. Arizona State graduate transfer guard Marreon Jackson led the way with nine points on 4-for-7 shooting from the field. Usually a reliable three-point shooter, Jackson couldn’t seem to land the long ball but contributed in every other way possible.
Jackson’s contributions would multiply in the second half. The Toledo transfer in his 157th career game, good enough for Top 25 all-time in college basketball appearances, stuffed the stat sheet with 18 pts, six boards, six assists, and finally, a career-high six steals. Jackson’s half-dozen swipes were nearly one-third of Stanford’s 21 turnovers on Saturday afternoon.
“To be honest with you, I don’t like defense that much,” Jackson admitted, chuckling. “I love scoring. I love scoring so much that I’m going to try to take the ball from you so I can get an easy layup; that’s the dead truth. I try to make the best reads.”
“It’s in his DNA to want to defend,” Hurley said, on the contrary. “He’s got excellent instincts, and he’s played a lot of basketball, so he knows positionally where to be and (is) reading what the offense is trying to do and making a calculated guess… Stanford is one of the tallest teams in the country, and we wanted to be aggressive (in creating turnovers), and he really led the charge there.”
Jackson, along with a monster afternoon from Graham, helped propel ASU away from Stanford, who managed to stay in the game until the final three minutes thanks to a strong performance from beyond the arc and on the glass. Stanford finished the game 10-26 from three to ASU’s 2-17 day. The Cardinal also had its spray bottle out, cleaning the glass with over double the number of offensive boards and second-chance points. Nevertheless, Arizona State found tremendous production up close, scoring 42 points inside the paint to Stanford’s 16.
Jackson’s final play on the afternoon would come with just 33 seconds remaining, as he secured a defensive rebound. Arizona State was up by seven, and Stanford looked to foul. Jackson didn’t give the Cardinal a chance, heaving a pass down court. The recipient was super senior forward Kimani Lawrence, the other player aside from Jackson celebrating his senior day.
ASU’s all-time leader in games played caught the pass at the three-point line, took a dribble, and rose, bringing Desert Financial to its feet with a monster windmill jam.
“It’s bittersweet,” Lawrence said of his last game inside the elderly confines of the Sun Devil arena. “I’ve been here for the last five years of my life, so this is like home now. I’m trying not to get too emotional and just focused on the game today, but I will miss playing here. I’ll miss my uniform. I’ll miss everything about Arizona State.”
Lawrence finished with six points, one rebound, and a block. Despite the bittersweet day at DFA, there is still much to look forward to for the super senior, as well as his graduate running mate, Jackson. With the late-season surge, Arizona State is rolling heading into the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas and has been doing its best to channel the energy of last year’s Oregon State team, who won the tournament outright as the No. 5 seed and rode the automatic NCAA Tournament berth all the way to the Elite Eight.
“Earlier in the season, I just kept saying that Oregon State made that huge run last year, UCLA made a big run last year late, so I always believed that we still had a chance, especially after I saw what we were doing all summer,” Lawrence said. “I always knew that if we can get things turned around, we can still save our season… We got a lot of guys playing well, and we trust each other. A lot of things are going right for us.”
Despite ASU’s win over Stanford, the Sun Devils will enter the Pac-12 Tournament with an extremely tough path to the championship. With Oregon’s loss to Washington State, ASU is staring at the No. 8 seed, matched up with the No. 9 seed, likely to be filled by Stanford. The winner of that game will face the inevitable No. 1 seed, Arizona. However, back-to-back games against the same opponent aren’t anything new to Hurley.
“If COVID prepared us for anything, it’s that,” Hurley said about facing Stanford in consecutive games. “We had so many scenarios like that, but I don’t know who will have the edge in those types of situations. I felt like this was a game our guys should’ve won, and we handled our business and got it done. We will see who the opponent is on Wednesday.”
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