(Photo: Scotty Bara/WCSN)
For Sun Devils basketball fans, this is the moment everybody has been waiting for.
With the long-term rigor of Arizona State’s brutal nonconference schedule behind them, head coach Bobby Hurley and his new-look Sun Devils now face the single greatest challenge on their entire schedule all year long in the No. 5 Kentucky Wildcats.
Hurley is as familiar as anyone with Kentucky basketball, being a part of maybe the greatest game in college basketball history in the 1992 Elite Eight matchup between the Wildcats and the Duke Blue Devils, with Hurley at point guard for Duke. The game was chippy the whole way, and ended with a buzzer beater by Duke’s Christian Laettner off a full court inbound pass from Grant Hill.
Since that monumental matchup, the Wildcats have made the NCAA Tournament 21 times and Hurley has crossed their path only once, which was last year when he faced the Wildcats as the head coach of Buffalo.
Buffalo lost the matchup, but now Hurley gets a shot at going 2-1 against college basketball’s all-time winningest program.
Kentucky’s one loss this season came from the hands of the UCLA Bruins, a time when Kentucky was ranked as the best team in the nation. The Bruins handled UK for most of the game, and ended up winning 87-77 despite being unranked.
ASU is coming off a week of rest following its big win over the No. 18 Texas A&M Aggies 67-54, a game where ASU showed a lot of really good things that could possibly exploit the young Wildcats.
Keys to the Game
Guard play
With two freshmen and a sophomore starting in the backcourt, what the Kentucky guards may lack in experience they make up for with plenty of ability.
Kentucky sophomore guard Tyler Ulis is one of the only remaining players from last year’s Final Four team, and his distribution and pesky on-ball defense have the potential to create a lot of problems for the ASU defense.
ASU sophomore point guard Tra Holder will have his biggest (not literally) personal matchup of the season having to guard Ulis, and his on-ball and ball-screen defense will be tested all game long. This game could very likely come down to whichever point guard decides to dictate the pace of the game.
To complete the trio of the UK starting guards are freshmen Isaiah Briscoe and Jamal Murray, who are the team’s top two scorers with Murray averaging 15.3 points per game and Briscoe with 12.9 points per game. With Briscoe at 6-foot-3 and Murray at 6-foot-5, one will have to be guarded by ASU senior forward Willie Atwood if the Sun Devils stick with the lineup they have gone with as of late.
Overall, the three guards for UK are their top three scorers, averaging 40.3 of UK’s 80 per game. If ASU is going to have a chance in this game, the guards have to be contained.
Smart Shot Selection
The one big difference in UCLA’s big win over Kentucky, and ASU’ big win over TAMU was the three-point attempts by both teams. ASU put up 30 threes, while UCLA only attempted 11 and made five.
In its defense, ASU was hot from downtown, and ended up making 10 of its 30 attempts. But what can’t happen on the road in a very hostile environment is taking bad shots that give the other team more opportunities.
There have been a lot of times this year where when ASU makes a couple threes, then settles and starts jacking them up one after another. With Kentucky’s bigs being almost as foul prone as ASU’s, there is no reason senior guard Gerry Blakes and company shouldn’t be shy in getting to the rim.
With so much hype going into this game since the schedule was released last spring, along with the way Hurley has gotten the Sun Devils to buy into his new system, there is no reason to think ASU won’t put up a fight in this game.
