Coming off two unexpected losses to Princeton and Utah, Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley made a change to his lineup, helping push the team to an 83-61 win over Colorado.
Instead of starting both freshman guard Luguentz Dort and sophomore guard Remy Martin, Hurley elected to start Rob Edwards and De’Quon Lake in their respective places.
“He actually told us in practice and I was like, ‘Wow, for real?’” Romello White said after the game about the lineup change. “I always wanted it to happen and he finally did it.”
ASU tinkered with the starting lineup early in the season to cover for Martin as he nursed an ankle injury. Hurley kept the starting lineup for future games open-ended.
“That could change at a moment’s notice,” Hurley said about the lineup. “Remy and Lu [Dort] are two of the best players on our team. We’ve settled into the eight-man rotation and really any of those guys could start on any given day. I just thought we needed to do something to shake things up.”
White, in particular, seemed to make the most of the change. He led ASU in scoring with 19 points and added a team-high eight rebounds. Lake came in and posted 12 points and seven rebounds, and enjoy playing with his buddy White as well.
The lineup change seemed to fire up ASU. They jumped out to an early 8-0 lead, six of those points from White, and never looked back. The squad was firing on all cylinders, hitting 17-of-30 shots in the first half, seemingly ready to put their last two games behind them.
“Everybody was down after the losses,” White said. “The vibe in the locker room wasn’t good and we don’t like that. We like winning, we like being happy… We had a little chip on our shoulder.”
Great passing led the way for ASU’s hot shooting night. Coming off a 15 assist performance against Utah, ASU racked up a season-high 24 assists against Colorado.
“Just liked how we moved the basketball and the decision-making,” Hurley said. “The assist totals were excellent.”
That ball movement paid dividends, and when the final horn sounded, five ASU players had scored in double digits. Not only was ASU sharing the wealth in the scoring department, they also held the Buffaloes to just 32.8 percent shooting after piecing together a solid defensive performance.
Perhaps more than anything, this was a confidence boost for a team that needed a big victory after two difficult losses.
“We just have to find more of a level of consistency,” Hurley said. “And this was probably as close as we’ve played to putting together two very good halves.”
“This is the first game I feel like we put 40 minutes together,” White said. “Playing together as a team, we collectively all engaged in the game. Everybody did their part.”
The Sun Devils hope to keep this momentum going, specifically in a riddled Pac-12 conference that may very well be theirs for the taking. According to White, however, it starts with playing as a team.
“When we play together, it’s hard to beat us,” White said. “It’s hard to stop us.”
