(Photo: Marlee Smith/WCSN)
Remy Martin stared intensively down the lane, his normal aura of omnipotence was nowhere to be found. After struggling to find his rhythm in the first half, the Arizona State Men’s Basketball senior guard was determined to help his team finish on the road against No. 24 ranked Colorado. With the game tied at 35 and 18:45 remaining in the game, Martin remained aggressive.
He crossed over right and seemingly blew past Colorado junior guard Eli Parquet. Just as Martin rose to attempt an easy finger roll, Parquet closed the distance, elevated and pegged the shot against the plexiglass. Martin’s body language oozed frustration as he made his way to the opposing end.
Parquet stuck to the hip pocket of the slippery senior all night. Denying dribble hand-offs, playing above screens and utter physicality were all key points to his gutsy defensive performance – a performance that held Martin, a 21.3 point per game scorer, to just six points on 1-9 shooting.
This snapped Martin’s streak of eight games with at least 20 points scored. Parquet’s length, athleticism and IQ on the defensive end often does not show up on the stat sheet – it shows up elsewhere: in the win column.
On Thursday night, No. 24 Colorado outlasted ASU 75-61, severing the Sun Devils’ three game winning skid.
“Our guards couldn’t effectively get by their guards,” ASU head coach Bobby Hurley said. “Parquet especially with Remy, limiting his touches. [Martin] didn’t really look like himself.”
With their senior star struggling, ASU was starving for scoring. The Sun Devils looked to senior guard Holland Woods and sophomore guard Jaelen House in the first half. With Woods as the primary ball handler, Colorado chose to go under on screens. This came to a halt as Woods quickly cashed in on the negligence, scoring 10 points (4-5 shooting) before the break.
House added eight points in the first frame including two threes and his usual defensive pressure. The two guards finished with five points a piece in the second half as Colorado pulled away.
“It was Holland Woods and it was [Jaelen] House, I mean those two guys, they really did somethings offensively,” Hurley said. “Especially in the first half, they went a combined 7-8 from the field, and we [as a team] were shooting 39 [percent] in the first half. Jeez, if it wasn’t for those two we would have been in a really bad spot.”
The overarching story of the first half though was ball security. It did not take long to get the turnover party started. In the first four minutes there were 10 combined team cough-ups. Errant passes, overly aggressive drives and flat out sloppy play plagued both teams in the first half. At the break, Colorado led 31-30 as the two teams totaled 19 first half turnovers.
Usually turnovers play right into the hands of the Sun Devils, as ASU has tended to be a team that likes to get downhill while taking care of the ball. Thursday night was another uncharacteristic performance as the Sun Devils struggled to create in transition.
“We were down one at the half, but I thought there were opportunities to maybe get ahead a little more and we just didn’t take advantage of that,” Hurley said. “I think the turnovers had something to do with it. We sprinkled in a couple of zero pass possessions, where we outlet the ball to someone and whoever that someone is, if they just go off set defense and shoot some type of uncontested off-balance shot, you might as well call that a turnover too. So even though we had nine [first half turnovers], we had three or four other offensive possessions that were the equivalent of a turnover.”
Senior guard Alonzo Verge Jr. was too often the victim of tunnel vision. His eight points (3-12 shooting) came the hard way with a bevy of pull-ups and highly contested jump-shots. Verge Jr. began the second half with back-to-back fouls and a turnover, and was subbed out after 1:39 of action.
“We [Verge Jr. and Hurley] had a little bit of a disagreement, so we talked it through like adults do,” Hurley said. “And then he [Verge Jr.] came in and had a nice stretch.”
Verge Jr. was subbed back in with a little less than 14 minutes remaining in the game, adding two back-to-back three pointers on a pedestrian night.
ASU limited its second half turnovers to two. In similar fashion, the Buffaloes cleaned up their early-game messiness and only committed three turnovers in the second half – thus forcing the Sun Devils to rely exclusively on their halfcourt offense. Even at full health, ASU’s identity never lied in the halfcourt set, with Martin and Verge struggling with fouls and the task to score without pace becoming even harder.
“I thought we were in decent shape down one [at halftime] and came out okay to start the half,” Hurley said. “They just really turned it up a notch defensively.”
ASU shot 9-30 (30 percent) from the field in the second half, while adding only seven points in transition. The Sun Devils tried desperately to remove the lid from the rim while attempting to survive a second half surge from Colorado senior guard McKinley Wright. Wright was dormant in the first half, scoring just seven points on 3-7 shooting. He brought all of the fireworks in the second, though, scoring 17 points on 70 percent shooting from the field. The 6’0” star elevated his team with tough contact finishes in the lane and veteran post moves on the low block.
“I didn’t like how we finished the game at all,” Hurley said. “I just think they had too many lay-ups, they scored numerous times. We kind of just folded some defensively and McKinely Wright had his fingerprints all over that.”
Whenever ASU needed a crucial defensive stop down the stretch Thursday night, Wright would bury another cold-blooded bucket.
With the regular season finale next up on the calendar, the Sun Devils will look to regain the full health and conditioning of freshman forward Marcus Bagley. Against Colorado, Bagley collected seven rebounds off the bench in a “limited” role.
“It’s more of an eye test with Marcus [Bagley],” Hurley said. “Getting him coming off the bench tonight was a way to limit his minutes some because I did not want to get a scenario where he is playing 25-30 minutes. The goal is to get him as good as we can get him by next week when the season is on the line.”
The Sun Devils now sit at 10-12 (7-9 conference), however their spirits are still high going into the Pac-12 Tournament.
“Before this game we were right there, unfortunately it ended the way we didn’t want it to,” Woods said. “This game was a must win for us. Now we know what we got to do: just bounce back. This game is over with. I think we’ll be ready when it counts.”
