ASU Men’s Basketball: Dominant first half enough for Sun Devils to hold on in First Four

(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)

It wasn’t a great display of basketball, especially in the second half, but No. 11 seeded ASU left no doubt it was the better team, defeating fellow No. 11 seed St John’s Red Storm 74-65 Wednesday night in Dayton, Ohio.

In the final “First Four” matchup of this year’s tournament, the Sun Devils earned their first victory in March madness since 2009, earning the right to play No. 6 seeded Buffalo on Friday, which happens to be coach Bobby Hurley’s former team.

In fact, Hurley won the MAC tournament championship coaching the Bulls in 2015- his last of two seasons coaching there- and admitted in the postgame interview that it still hasn’t registered that he’ll be going against the coach he once hired onto his staff in Nate Oats.

However, there were times in the second half where it seemed like ASU getting to the round of 64 would be in jeopardy, despite leading by as much as 18 points in the first half.

St John’s started the second half on an 8-2 run, immediately cutting into ASU’s 38-25 halftime lead and getting as close as seven points.

The Red Storm’s initial run was aided by an injury to ASU’s freshman guard Luguentz Dort, who took a scary crash onto the floor after leaping high in the air for a loose ball only 20 seconds into the half.

The play resulted in a flagrant against junior guard Mustapha Heron, allowing junior ASU guard Rob Edwards to knock down a pair of free throws, but St. John’s rattled off eight straight points with Dort on the bench.

The freshman star was able to shake off the injury though, returning to the game to add 10 second half points in leading ASU’s victorious effort with 21 on 6-for-11 field goal shooting, while going 8-for-9 on free throws.

Upon Dort’s return, the Sun Devils appeared to regain their stronghold on the game. The Red Storm went on a shooting cold spell, going 1-for-12 after that initial run, and a rare three from senior forward Zylan Cheatham restored ASU’s 13-point lead, 50-37, by the tv timeout at 10:29 to go in the second.

Still, St. John’s was able to hang around thanks to the efforts of junior guard Shamorie Ponds, the game’s leading scorer with 25 points, and sophomore LJ Figueroa, who exploded in the second half to finish with 19 points and 10 rebounds.

ASU accounting for 13 of the 21 combined turnovers in the second half was another reason St. John’s was able to stick around in a game that seemed destined to end in a rout for most of the first half.

The Sun Devil lead was down to 64-57 with two minutes to play despite leading by double digits for much of those final 10 minutes.

To counter ASU’s sloppy and indecisive play that arose in the second half, the Red Storm combined to shoot 6-for-33 from the field outside of the efforts of Ponds and Figueroa.

There wasn’t a great spreading of the wealth from the normally balanced Sun Devils either, as Cheatham’s 14-point, 10-rebound effort meant that him and Dort accounted for over 47 percent of the team’s points.

But ASU’s bench outscored that of St. John’s 17-5, and Edwards helped out adding nine points and eight rebounds, surprisingly the halftime rebound leader for either team with six.

Plus, for a team that’s been knocked all season for its free throw shooting, it seems to have developed as one of, if not the biggest factor in the team’s recent success.

Edwards shot a perfect 6-for-6, Dort went 8-for-9 and Cheatham was 7-for-10, leading ASU to a 75.8 percent team effort on the night, compared to St. John’s 13-for-23 effort- good for 56.5 percent.

At times, it looked like the team that would come out on top would be the one that did the least to lose. But the Sun Devils dominated the first 15 minutes- scoring only three points in the final 5:17 of the opening half- and played well enough the rest of the way to earn a decisive victory and take the program deeper than it’s been in a decade.

ASU has won seven of its last nine games and will look to keep that momentum going when it matches up with Buffalo on Friday at 1 p.m.