(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
Arizona State has never been known as a basketball school.
Arizona sure has, but the Sun Devils have rarely turned heads for their prowess on the hardwood.
However, this year’s team has an affinity for breaking past precedent, and the effort is being led by a group of guards.
Arizona State has three seniors and a freshman that’ve played so well in the backcourt that this year’s Sun Devils have dubbed themselves “GuardU.”
It’s a bold nickname with hundreds of other division one schools that’ve got some pretty good guards themselves, but the moniker has its merit.
ASU is the only Pac-12 team with three guards among the conference’s top 24 scorers. Those would be senior guards Tra Holder (19.3 ppg), Shannon Evans II (16.7) and Kodi Justice (13).
The Sun Devils also have guard Remy Martin getting serious consideration for the conference’s sixth man of the year award.
He is tied for third among Pac-12 freshmen in steals per game (1.26), second in free throw percentage (78.1 percent), and tied for sixth in assists per game (2.6) all while averaging fewer minutes per contest than every one of those freshmen ranking above him in those categories.
“I’m just amazed with how he can take over games as a freshman in a backup role,” coach Bobby Hurley said, “to come in there and have such a great belief in himself that he can kind of, I think in the Utah game, put the team on his back in the second half through some of those stages. He’s done that numerous times this year, so it’s very exciting to know he’s capable of doing those things.”
Hurley is referencing ASU’s overtime loss to Utah a week ago, when Martin went on a 10-0 run alone to bring the Sun Devils back from an eight-point deficit to a 57-55 lead with 7:23 left in the game.
“I think (Martin) could start on many teams in this league,” Holder said. “He’s tenacious in a way where I kind of look at him and try to pick things from his game that I could improve on.”
Evans II shares a similar sentiment, saying that he sees Remy as the potential face of ASU basketball once him, Holder and Justice graduate.
Three seniors giving this much respect to a freshman is as much about Martin’s skill as it is about the style of leadership the elder trio deploys.
“Me, Shannon and Kodi, we’re not those seniors who pick on freshmen and say ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ we’re not those type of people,” Holder said. “Everyone has a voice, everyone has freedom and (Martin) has as much importance to the team as any of us do.”
It’s been an environment the freshman has thrived in, as he’s been learning from the experienced seniors.
“Just their poise,” Martin said about what he’s taken from playing with the group. “Different things like them coming off pick and rolls and being able to observe the court and take their time, not everything’s a rush. With my speed I got to be able to slow the game down and accelerate whenever I need to.”
As much as all four guards may feel like they play an equal role in the group’s comradery and overall success, it’s hard to overlook the man who oversees it all- coach Hurley.
He’s on a shortlist of the best point guards in college basketball history, having won two national titles at Duke and finishing as the all-time leader in assists, a record that stands to this day.
Hurley’s current guards are emphasizing how well his playing experience has translated to coaching.
“It’s been great, I think it’s expanded my game a lot,” Holder said of Hurley’s emphasis on skill work in practice. “Coach Hurley does a great job.”
“He knows a lot of things some coaches don’t know because they haven’t played the game,” Martin said. “He’s able to be my eyes off the court. If I don’t see something, he’s there to tell me ‘look out for this because it might be there’ and that’s just an improvement of my game.”
Clearly Hurley’s players aren’t the only ones who believe in him, as he was just signed to a five-year extension last week.
Although the team fell from being ranked fourth New Year’s Day to being unranked just over a month later, Martin believes the adversity will only bring the team closer.
“When adversity hits, the circle, as we say, gets smaller and we just are able to connect with each other and talk to each other a lot more and to figure things out,” Martin said. “Everybody’s good when everything’s fine. But us, as a locker room, when everything’s bad, all the outside people that congratulated you go away. So at the end of the day, all you got is yourselves and the team.”
With a month of regular season basketball still to be played, three of the top 120 recruits set to become Sun Devils this fall and coach Hurley sticking around for the foreseeable future, it doesn’t look like GuardU is going away anytime soon.
