(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
In a crowded Pac-12, each one of the Sun Devils final five regular season games loom large in determining seeding for the Pac-12 tournament.
ASU (18-8, 9-5 Pac-12) certainly played like it Wednesday night, cruising to an 80-62 victory over the Stanford Cardinal (14-12, 7-7), avenging a 14-point loss to them back in January.
“This is my gangster shirt,” coach Bobby Hurley said of his attire, a black dress shirt to go with a dark tie. “The guys played like gangsters out there, and they played hard, they took control of the game, they battled, they fought and so I enjoyed wearing my black shirt tonight.”
The Sun Devils won this game from the three-point line more than anything, shooting 9-for-21, good for 43 percent, compared to Stanford’s abysmal 2-for-20 effort, a rate of 10 percent.
“I think part of it was just our pressure,” Hurley said, “and then what we were doing in some ball screens we were really speeding them up some and we didn’t allow them just to go side-to-side. They like to go side-to-side with their ball-screen offense and then wait for the breakdown and we just were more aggressive and we didn’t allow them to do it.”
As one would imagine based on the three-point shooting, ASU’s backcourt led the victorious effort. Sophomore Remy Martin and redshirt junior Rob Edwards each scored 16 points on a combined 11-for-18 shooting from the field, each adding five rebounds and combining for 10 assists, as Martin led both teams with six.
In fact, Martin may have caused the turning point of this one-sided affair late in the first half.
Although ASU led for 12:32 of the opening 20 minutes, the team’s biggest lead of the half had been six. But with 37 seconds until the buzzer, Martin splashed an NBA-range triple from the top of the key, giving the Sun Devils an eight-point advantage at the break.
“I think that three was a big momentum swing,” Martin said. “Sometimes at halftime where it’s a close game teams usually jump out on us, so it was also good to know that we got some leeway, we can still play, we can still feel free.”
“Not just that three though, that three was just a little part of what we were talking about with just being energized and making the right plays and that’s what we did today. It was a great game.”
It was another Sun Devil victory characterized by balance, as freshmen Luguentz Dort and Taeshon Cherry both added 11 points and four players tied for a team-high five rebounds (Edwards, Martin, Dort and senior Zylan Cheatham).
“I thought we put together two pretty good halves, very good half on offense first half, defense really stepped up in the second half,” Hurley said. “We got really good balance on offense, so couldn’t really ask for a better effort tonight.”
In a second half where Stanford never got within six points, and never within eight over the final eight minutes, their one bright spot was seven-footer Josh Sharma.
The senior big man only missed at the free-throw line, shooting 7-for-7 from the field to lead both teams with 17 points in addition to his game-high seven rebounds.
“They pose problems because of Sharma’s size and (sophomore forward Oscar) Da Silva’s long and they got good size with their guards,” Hurley said. “It was great that we played that way and broke it open late.”
Da Silva was Stanford’s second-leading scorer with 15 points, but nobody else scored more than six on the night for the Cardinal.
This was due to one of ASU’s many strong defensive performances this season. At one point, the Sun Devils drew three charges in a period spanning about four minutes in the first half, just one of many ways Stanford was limited on offense.
“We know that they beat us back at their place,” Edwards said. “So we watched a lot of film and we saw for the most part it was us on defense with breakdowns and us turning the ball over, so that’s what we focused on this week at practice.”
Most notably, the Cardinal were without forward KZ Okpala, who dropped 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds in their January victory over the Sun Devils, perhaps one of the main factors in the large margin of victory.
Additionally, Cherry was ejected with 11:23 to play after tripping a Cardinal player while on the ground after a missed fadeaway three from the corner- his second flagrant of the night.
“Taeshon is kind of like me as a freshman,” Hurley said. “He’s got so much spirit and emotion and raw energy and you got to try and harness it and control it. He’ll learn and he’ll mature but he’s a super talented guy and we’ll work with him so that he puts this behind him.”
Ultimately, it was a game that gave ASU some separation in the conference standings, as the Sun Devils have earned some breathing room ahead of the cluster that is fifth through tenth place.
Currently, they are tied with Oregon State for second place and a half-game ahead of Utah for fourth.
They will get the chance to extend that margin this Sunday when they host the California Golden Bears (5-20, 0-13) at 4 p.m. for senior day. The game will be televised on Pac-12 Networks.
