(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
Before Arizona State even took the court for the final time this season at Desert Financial Arena, the Sun Devils were already having a good day. If the Devils had done any scoreboard watching, they’d have seen a myriad of results that would’ve left them pleased.
Bubble teams everywhere were falling – many of them against inferior opponents – just as the Sun Devils had done Thursday night in a 90-83 loss to the last place Washington Huskies.
“We finished shootaround and the games were on,” head coach Bobby Hurley said when asked whether the Sun Devils (20-11, 11-7 Pac-12) knew a win Saturday would earn them a first-round bye at the conference tournament. “People were flowing through watching and it’s always better – I think it was – to have an idea of where you might stand if things break your way. At the same time though, if we don’t handle our business it doesn’t matter what those teams do.”
For much of the afternoon, the Sun Devils appeared as if they would cruise to a regular season-ending victory, wrapping up an 11-7 record in conference play with ease. Then Washington State (15-16, 6-12 Pac-12) heated up, scoring 10 straight points, all of which came in the paint.
“Rebound!” Hurley yelled at his players as the Cougars, led by freshman Volodymyr Markovetskyy, WSU’s 7-foot-1 center grabbed offensive rebound after offensive rebound early in the second half. “Rebound!”
The Cougars continued their run, extending it to 20-5 and tying the game at 68 apiece.
“We were just coming down, not really getting good shots and missing,” said senior guard Rob Edwards. “They were coming down and getting easy buckets in transition and we let them get back into the game.”
Before the Sun Devils lost three straight games to UCLA, USC and Washington, ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi told Cronkite Sports the Sun Devils’ had a better than 85 percent chance to make the NCAA Tournament. Those odds had shifted prior to Saturday, with Lunardi slating the Sun Devils’ for a third straight trip to Dayton before the contest.
But Saturday night was different for ASU than the rest of its bubble peers. Instead of allowing the Washington State run to snowball – as they had Thursday when the Huskies ran off a 20-4 run – the Sun Devils answered the call.
“Once you lose that type of lead usually teams might mail it in and go down the tubes,” said Hurley, whose Sun Devil squad will head into the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas next week as the No. 3 seed. “But our team has a ton of character and didn’t fold.”
“I feel like we had so much fight in us tonight,” Edwards said. “We just kept fighting until the end.”
While Texas spent its afternoon trailing Oklahoma State wire-to-wire in an 81-59 loss – during which the Longhorns trailed by 22 at halftime – Arizona State led WSU for more than 30 minutes of action.
While Indiana blew a nine-point lead at Assembly Hall against No. 24 Wisconsin – scoring just one basket in the closing 10 minutes of action – the Sun Devils ended the game on a 15-6 run, making each of their last five field goal attempts.
“We always find a way to make it interesting for some reason,” said junior guard Alonzo Verge, who scored a team-high 20 points in the win.
A pull-up jumper from junior guard Remy Martin bounced around the rim and fell through to give the Sun Devils back the lead at 70-68. WSU forward Tony Miller missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Martin found Rob Edwards for a 3-pointer from the corner, to extend the Sun Devils lead to five.
“It was good to see one go through,” said Edwards, whose nine points, six rebounds and three assists helped the Sun Devils close out the regular season with a 83-74 win on Senior Day. “Obviously, I wasn’t really hitting no shots throughout the game so Rem[y] trusted me and he hit me in the corner.
“That’s what playmakers do. Find shooters and I kept shooting no matter what.”
Martin in particular bounced back after a six-point effort in Thursday’s loss to Washington, during which the Sun Devil guard shot 2-of-14 from the floor and 1-of-10 from deep. The junior guard missed his first two 3-point attempts of the night before canning his third attempt from the corner to give the Sun Devils a 26-16 lead. Later in the first half, Martin swung his right fist through the air after making another shot from deep to give the Sun Devils a 10-point lead.
“Some of those 3s that he hit were needed in the first half,” Hurley said. “He had one where he had a lot of passion and fire after he made it, so it was just tremendous to see him hit a couple of shots. He’s too good of a player not to for any extended period of time.”
With an 18-point, six-assist performance, Hurley and Verge made sure to defend Martin following Thursday’s poor showing.
“That’s what happens when you’re one of the best players on the team,” Verge said. “You’ve gotta take the good with the bad. And he took the bad and that happens. And he moved on and he produced the next game and that’s what a real leader does.”
“We’re kind of isolating one game so people are attacking him, and they are just out of their mind,” Hurley said. “But that’s the world we live in. We live in a day-to-day world, or a week-to-week world and we forget how many games that guy has helped Arizona State basketball win.”
The Sun Devils got production out of their leader, but Washington State sophomore forward CJ Elleby was unable to get going for the Cougars. After scoring 27 points, including the game-winning 3 against ASU in Pullman, Elleby was held to six points on 2-of-18 shooting from the field.
Among Lunardi’s “Last Four In” and “Last Four Byes,” five of the seven teams in action lost Saturday. Yet ASU took care of WSU, avoiding a quad 3 loss to the Cougars after falling at the buzzer in Pullman over a month ago.
Marquette lost by two to a St. John’s team the Sun Devils took down in December. Arkansas was upset at Texas A&M, and South Carolina lost to an 11-win Vanderbilt team. Yet with all the upsets, Arizona State avoided disaster.
“We haven’t had one quad 3 or quad 4 loss. We have a number of quad 1 wins, and quad 2 wins, so I can’t say like 100 percent, but I would imagine we are in [the tournament,]” Hurley said. “We’ve had a great year. We’ve had a great story. And we have one of the best, most dynamic players in college basketball that the country should get a chance to see.”
With the No. 3 seed in Las Vegas next week, the Sun Devils will take on the winner of No. 6 Colorado and No. 11 Washington State Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. Despite losing three of their final four to end the regular season, Hurley said he’s choosing to put a positive spin on things.
“I look at it like we’ve won eight out of 11,” Hurley said. “I wouldn’t call that limping in.”
