(Photo: Susan Wong/WCSN)
The path of Alonzo Verge and this year’s Arizona State team are oddly similar. Before the season, head coach Bobby Hurley elevated expectations for the Sun Devils on the offensive end, vocalizing a belief that he had one of the most gifted shooting teams from long distance in the five years he’s been in Tempe.
Expectations for Verge were high after the junior guard averaged a National Junior College Athletic Association leading 30.8 points per game in his sophomore season at Moberly Area Community College. A wrist injury forced the Chicago native to miss three of the Sun Devils’ first six games, but he still played through pain early this season.
“I was going through a lot at the beginning of the year,” Verge said Tuesday. “There was a lot of emotions and a lot of things that I was going through. I fell on my wrist and I was hurt but I didn’t wanna stop and say I was hurt because I wasn’t playing good enough to say that.
“I felt like I had to fight through it and do what I’ve gotta do and that’s what I tried to do, but it didn’t turn out good.”
The Sun Devils flirted with early success, dropping a non-conference matchup to then No. 7 Virginia, 48-45. Three days after scoring 43 points in a 40-point loss to Saint Mary’s, Verge went 6-for-23 in a seven-point loss at home to Creighton. More often than not, Verge’s offensive game was inefficient and out of place, struggling to mesh with junior guard Remy Martin and the rest of the Sun Devils.
“I knew what he was capable of,” said Martin, whose 19.6 points per game leads all scorers in the Pac-12. “Everybody knows that he can score the ball, we were just waiting for him to click.”
Verge’s struggles were on full display during the Sun Devils trip to Oregon in early January. Against the then No. 9 Ducks, the 6-foot-3 junior went 0-for-5 from the field in 17 minutes of action, failing to register a free throw attempt in the Sun Devils’ nine-point loss.
A realization ultimately hit Verge as he continued to struggle. Understanding the difference in speed and pace at the Division 1 level, Verge said he began to slow down his decision-making process while trying to do less.
“I used to come off the ball screen and rush and try to make decisions and things like that,” said Verge, whose shot over 50 percent from the field in six of ASU’s past eight contests. “I used to try to fit the ball into tight spaces because I used to do that a lot in JUCO, and I noticed like, ‘I’m not at JUCO no more.’
“It was just all about me being patient.”
It seems easy to pinpoint Verge’s game-winning layup in Arizona State’s 22-point comeback over Arizona as the “aha” moment of his season, but that remains where the junior guard said it clicked for him.
With the game on the line and the Wildcats forcing the ball out of Martin and senior guard Rob Edwards’ hands, Verge brought freshman forward Jalen Graham into a screen action. As Jemarl Baker peaks toward the screen from Graham, Verge darts to the rim, denying the ball screen with his defender out of position.
In recent weeks, Verge has been able to identify when to push the envelope, taking advantage of weak and lazy defenses to score in double-figures in each of his last seven games.
“When I was in JUCO I could take the ball and go through everybody and just score,” Verge said. “Now, it’s like you’ve gotta relax. I can do that sometimes, but you’ve gotta pick and choose when you can and can’t. The flow of the game is totally different.”
Here, after a made basket by UCLA, Verge identifies that his defender is on his heels, and sees there is no rim protector lurking. The slender guard beats the Bruins defense down the court, despite having just made a basket of their own.
Verge has thrived since Hurley moved him to the bench, and is one of the contenders for Pac-12 Sixth Man of the Year. Add in that Verge’s defensive effort has been above average, and the Sun Devils have found the player they once expected.
“He’s everything that I thought he would be right away, and I didn’t have enough patience to wait to see that materialize,” Hurley said. “I just think some of it is learning to play together with Remy.
“It’s just different, there are other guys that need the basketball, and it was an adjustment for him, but he’s kind of living up to what I thought he’d be.”
As Arizona State (17-8, 8-4 Pac-12) prepares for a visit from No. 14 Oregon (20-6, 9-4 Pac-12), Verge and Martin will be a large factor as to their success Thursday night at Desert Financial Arena. The game between the Ducks and Sun Devils also features the subplot of the Pac-12 Player of the Year race between Remy Martin and Payton Pritchard.
“We know that Oregon is a great team and he’s a great player,” said Martin who was named the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week after averaging 23 points and 3.5 assists in the Sun Devils’ first road sweep since 2010. “They got us in the [Pac-12] tournament and at their house, and now it just feels only right just to go ahead and get another crack at them. Our crowd is going to be great. We’re going to have a lot of things on our side, we just have to go out there and play our game.”
