ASU Men’s Basketball: Season Preview

(Photo: Scotty Bara/WCSN)

 

If there was one solid narrative to Arizona State men’s basketball heading into the 2015-16 season, it would circulate the mystery surrounding this team.

Last season the ASU was projected to place ninth in the Pac-12. Nobody argued the case as the Sun Devils lost their three best players and would expect key contributions immediately from four junior college transfers – Gerry Blakes, Willie Atwood, Savon Goodman, and Roosevelt Scott. That team took fifth in the conference, and despite a disappointing first round loss in the Pac-12 tournament, it managed to turn some heads with its play down the home stretch of the season.

This season will be no different. Three more JUCO transfers have joined the roster, and most notably, a historic name in the college basketball world has taken over as the new head coach.

The beginning of the Hurley era

Bobby Hurley, a two-time national champion in 1991 and 1992, including a Final Four Most Outstanding Player award in 1992, is one of the greatest point guards in the history of college basketball. While his professional career didn’t reflect the success he found at the collegiate level, he excelled in a different profession, and that is coaching.

His first head coaching job came in 2013 at the Buffalo. He led the Bulls to the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in the 2014-15 season, and when Herb Sendek was fired from the helm of Sun Devil basketball, Hurley’s name lingered as a potential replacement throughout the whole process.

Hurley not only brought his basketball experience and prowess, but also managed to bring along a duo of guards from his tournament team at Buffalo. While both will have to sit out this season because of the NCAA’s transfer rules, both will have a lot to bring to the team this season. Torian Graham, currently a junior guard, has already put his thrilling athleticism on display winning the M&G game dunk contest on Oct. 9, including this dunk:

The other Bull-turned-Sun Devil that we will have to wait to see in game action is junior guard Shannon Evans. Evans was the Bulls’ second-leading scorer last season recording 15.4 points per game as well as 4.6 assists. He was a second-team All-MAC player, and from what he has shown early in practice, he will be one of the most important players on the team by helping to develop sophomore point guard Tra Holder.

The Emergence of Tra Holder

Holder was named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman team last season, and although the numbers may say differently, he was as vital to the team’s success as any other player on the floor a season ago. The flashes of potential with his play against some of the best point guards in the country gave enough reason to believe that Holder is a smart investment, and bringing Hurley and Evans along is the perfect scenario for the second-year point guard.

One of the main reasons Holder got off to a slow start to his freshman year was due to the fact that he was the only true point guard on the roster. He had to teach himself to ropes of manning the most mentally draining position in basketball, and he had nobody to push him in practice every day other than his fellow 2014 class member, guard Kodi Justice.

Holder began to lose minutes to Justice, and it appeared that his confidence was rattled. 

With the Pac-12 having lost six elite point guards in the (TJ McConell, Arizona; Askia Booker, Colorado; Joseph Young, Oregon; Chasson Randle, Stanford; Delon Wright, Utah; Nigel Williams-Goss, Washington), the door is wide open for Holder to become the best point guard in the conference. Having a first-class player like Evans pushing him every single day in practice and Hurley providing his point guard wisdom in a new-look offensive scheme, Holder is destined for a solid season.

Gerry Blakes and a year to never forget

Senior guard Gerry Blakes put himself into a leadership role last season, and nobody questioned his superintendence as he established himself the premiere scorer on the team.

Being one of the four JUCO additions on last season’s squad, he joined Holder in replacing the two holes left in the backcourt and came out of the gates letting people know what he was capable of. His total of five 20-point games was second on the team last season only to McKissic, and Blakes ended the season averaging 11.1 points per game.

Blakes had one of the most eventful offseasons of any player on the team, participating in Los Angeles’ Drew League, one of the world’s biggest pro-am basketball leagues. One of the highlights of the experience was earning week nine player of the week, in which he had a 38-point game.

While the improvements to Blakes’ game should be the most notable facet of the left-handers offseason, it unfortunately is not.

His mother and sister both passed away of a chronic inflammatory disease called lupus within three months of each other.

(azcentral’s Doug Haller has more on Blakes’ tragedy)

Through it all, Blakes continues to bringing up how blessed he was just to have the opportunity to play Division-I basketball. With the excellent season he had a season ago and everything he has gone through since the loss to USC in the Pac-12 tournament, Blakes leadership and drive will have him feeling more than feeling blessed to play, but blessed to excel.

Savon Goodman and Eric Jacobsen: two journeys, one mission

The Sun Devil frontcourt could not have sprouted from different roots. Likely to be one of the most under-the-radar big-man duos in the conference, junior forward Savon Goodman and senior center Eric Jacobsen’s differences will eventually be what molds them into a versatile threat.

Jacobsen is of a rare breed, meaning that he has remained a Sun Devil for four years. Of all eight upperclassmen on the ASU roster, Jacobsen is the lone Devil to spend every year in maroon and gold. He is also only one of two active players on the roster (the other being Kodi Justice) to be from the state of Arizona.

He has seen plenty of transformation on the roster throughout his campaign, but maybe the biggest change comes with his physique. After putting on weight going into last season, Jacobsen has lost 25 pounds since Hurley’s arrival and has said that he feels a lot lighter and more mobile already.

His counterpart, Savon Goodman, could not have gotten where he is today any differently. After going from UNLV in his freshman season to JUCO, and finally to ASU, Goodman thrived after sitting out the first 10 games of last season due to transfer rules. Goodman is ASU’s leading scorer after averaging 11.2 points per game.

 

Goodman’s scoring combined with Jacobsen’s defense in the interior was a crucial factor to ASU’s late-season run. This year should be no different, as both have also began to develop their jump-shooting to complement their scoring from the inside.

The most appealing element these two bring together is not on the stat sheet, and also doesn’t get enough credit. This duo is one of the hardest-working frontcourts in the conference, whether it’s Jacobsen taking a charge or Goodman getting second (or third, or fourth) chance points, they find a way to impact the game in a way that won’t necessarily show up on the scoreboard, but will certainly translate to a higher number on it.

Atwood and Justice look to bounce back

Sophomore guard Kodi Justice was coming on as a vital offensive piece to the Sun Devil system last season, and just as he was establishing himself in the rotation, he went down with a foot injury that would end his freshman season.

Junior forward Willie Atwood didn’t have the season he was expected to have as maybe the most highly-touted JUCO transfer Sendek brought in last year, losing minutes as the season went on. Even when Atwood was on the court, it was hard for him to put his game on display because his position was always a question. Is he a small forward, or a power forward?

Having these two players looking to recover from disappointing conclusions to their 2014-15 seasons, Hurley and his high-paced system could not have come at a better time.

If the Western New Mexico exhibition says anything about what Hurley is going to do with this team, there are going to be plenty of experimental lineups without traditional positioning. What this does is allow for more fast break opportunities, and regardless of “position,” getting up the floor and in the best position to make a play. Justice and Atwood are both capable of playing multiple positions, and the freedom to run and spread out offensively could play very well to their respective and unique strengths.

The New Guys

Maybe the most likely addition to make an immediate impact is junior guard Andre Spight. A junior college commit who was lured to ASU by Sendek, Spight was in the starting lineup in the exhibition game against Western New Mexico.

While he is a pure scorer, the most exciting part of Spight’s offensive arsenal is his shooting from distance. Having lost Jon Gilling and Bo Barnes along with McKissic, the Sun Devils lost their three best three-point shooters, and the only remaining Sun Devil that made more than 20 threes last season was Gerry Blakes. Spight is likely to fill in for the lost shooting, and there is no reason to think that he won’t stand out on the offensive end.

The other newcomer to watch for, especially early on, is junior forward Obinna Oleka. Along with Atwood, Oleka is likely to see more minutes in the first few games while Goodman is recovering from his stress reaction in his foot. At 6-foot-7, 225 pounds, Oleka presents a similar build to Goodman and will ideally provide a similar spark.

With the limited depth in the frontcourt, Oleka provides something Goodman and Jacobsen have yet to show, and that is a developed jumpshot. Hurley’s new system presents much more motion and spacing compared to what the Sun Devils showed last season, and that plays to Oleka’s skillset.

That’s not to say that he isn’t capable of using his big frame under the rim as he showed by recording a double-double in the Western New Mexico exhibition game with 18 points and 12 rebounds. He was also the runner-up in the M&G dunk contest for whatever that is worth.

Thirdly is junior guard Maurice O’Field, a sophomore guard from Midland College in Cleveland, Ohio. What O’Field presents is valuable depth in the backcourt, but he also provides something none of the other guards on the rosters can.

O’Field stands at 6-foot-5, 210 pounds, making him the biggest guard on the roster. He already showed what he can do with his size at his position, snagging 11 rebounds in the game versus Western New Mexico.

How well O’Field will produce on the offensive end is still a bit of a question mark, but he provides a physical presence allowing him to fill valuable minutes at the off guard and small forward positions.

What to Watch For

Hurley’s Buffalo team that made the tournament last season was 33rd in the nation in possessions per 40 minutes with 68.5, while ASU was 122nd at 66. While the difference isn’t major, an extra 2.5 possessions per game could be an extra six points per game.

With the exception of McKissic, ASU returns its best players in transition and with the depth at the guard position, a faster pace is expected. Goodman is already one of the best at running floor at his position in the conference, and Jacobsen has said that his weight loss has given him the ability to run the floor better.

So one thing is for sure, this team is going to run, but one thing to watch for with this jump of pace is how the Sun Devils take care of the ball. ASU was one of the worst teams in the country in terms of taking care of the ball last season (288th), turning the ball over 18 times per 100 possessions.

Another area where ASU struggled in last season was at the free throw line. In conference play, the Sun Devils were 10th in the conference in free throw percentage at 66.8 percent. ASU lost eight games last year by five points or less, and its poor free throw percentage made it hard to find a way to win the down-to-the-wire matchups.

ASU also has one of the hardest nonconference schedules in the country this year, which was something Hurley emphasized when he arrived in Tempe.

The Sun Devils have the potential to play the top three teams in the SEC with Kentucky and Texas A&M in back-to-back games as well as a potential matchup with LSU in the Legends Classic. Other notable opponents before ASU enters Pac-12 play are North Carolina State, (potentially) Marquette, Creighton, UNLV, and Stephen F. Austin. All of those teams have been in the top-25 or have made the NCAA Tournament in the last two seasons.

This abundance of high-caliber competition gives ASU something it did not see a season ago in a tough nonconference lineup of opponents. The Sun Devils no doubt have the toughest nonconference schedule in the conference, and if anything could propel them to a hot start in Pac-12 play, it would be aligning their schedule in this way.

The Pac-12 is a conference in transition at the top, and if a program on the rise with a perfectly arranged marriage of personnel and style of play was going to shake up the conference, this would be the year to do it.

It’s a new era for Sun Devil basketball – one featuring a new coach, new faces, and plenty of question marks. Mysteriousness will is overarching theme heading into this season, but one thing is for sure: This program seems to be heading in the right direction, and there is no reason to think that the team won’t improve from last year’s roller coaster ride.

For more from the outside looking in to ASU’s season, check out Catchin’ Z’s season preview:

Catchin’ Z’s (11/12/15) — Complete Arizona State season preview by Catchin’ Z’S on Mixcloud

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