ASU Men’s Basketball: Sun Devils fall to Syracuse 92-84 despite late surge

(Photo: Dom Contini/WCSN)

Down 84-71 with 3:32 remaining, Arizona State Men’s Basketball head coach Bobby Hurley removed the lid on Pandora’s box.

Looking to mount a comeback, he opted to exchange twos at the stripe for three-pointers on the Sun Devils’ end of the floor.

Syracuse’s junior center Jesse Edwards received the first of ASU’s intentional fouls. Hitting the front-end of the one-and-one, Edwards failed to convert the second, foreshadowing the chaos that followed.

With possession, the Sun Devils wasted no time entering the ball to senior forward Kimani Lawrence in the high-post, poking the weakness of the Orange’s 2-3 defensive set. Upon his pivot towards the hoop, Lawrence immediately drove down to the right block. Drawing commitment from Syracuse senior forward Cole Swider, Lawrence made the heads-up play, kicking a pass out to junior guard Luther Muhammad for an open right-wing take from distance, whose shot was bottoms.

With still over three minutes left to play, the above sequence justified continuation of Hurley’s two-for-three formula.

After a backcourt violation from Syracuse and an empty offensive possession for ASU, it was senior forward Jimmy Boeheim’s turn at the stripe. Coming into Thursday night’s contest, the 6-foot-8 lefty was shooting 75% on 16 free throws through the Orange’s first four games.

He misfired to the right with Syracuse one foul away from the double-bonus. ASU then had another chance to dent its deficit.

Again, Muhammad did the honors.

Selling a pump fake a few steps off the right-wing, Muhammad quickly maneuvered into a one-dribble pull-up three. A late contest from a recovering Swider proved futile as the Ohio State transfer cut the Syracuse lead to seven.

The strategy from ASU continued almost until the end of the game – the Sun Devils inched ever closer thanks to missed Orange free throws and key made shots of their own. But crucial responses from Edwards and Swider ended up downing ASU 92-84 on Thanksgiving night in the Bahamas, dropping the Sun Devils to 2-4 early on in 2021-22.

It seemed like Hurley’s magic would work for the Sun Devils as time wound down – ASU took a possession off from fouling and looked to curate a legitimate stop or steal through its full-court trap concepts in crunch-time.

Next, the Orange averted a backcourt turnover, but ASU freshman guard Jamiya Neal forced senior guard Buddy Boeheim into a tough, off-balance floater. A defensive rebound would’ve perhaps secured the stop. Instead, the lanky-framed Edwards mobilized his elite wingspan to manage a quick catch-and-release layup, drawing ASU’s 10th foul in the process.

Despite the setback, Hurley’s group exercised fight. ASU junior forward Alonzo Gaffney split a trip to the line after an aggressive try on the offensive glass, bringing the Sun Devils’ deficit back to single-digits.

ASU then sent a third different Syracuse player to the mark on the other end. This time, it was junior guard Joseph Girard III. The 86.3% career free throw marksman had converted on each of his first 12 free throws this season.

But he missed the first one.

Edwards’ prior and-one, however, had pushed the Orange into the double-bonus. Girard III would convert on the second attempt.

Just seven seconds ticked off the clock before a left-corner jump-shot from sophomore guard Jay Heath fell for the Sun Devils’ 15th and final three of the night.

For the second time, ASU had pulled within seven. And for the second time, Syracuse responded with a crushing and-one finish.

With Hurley’s five scrambling from trap to trap in their half-court defense, it was only a matter of time before Syracuse found an opening. From the perimeter, Swider received a quick pass from Edwards in the high-post position. And despite being 4-5 from deep, the 6-foot-9 forward wisely attacked the rim, where ASU’s undersized sophomore guard DJ Horne was ill-equipped to challenge. Swider finished through contact and completed his add-on at the stripe to bring the Orange’s lead back to 10, finally closing the door to any late-game heroics from Hurley and the Sun Devils.

For the second straight game in Nassau, winning the second half didn’t correlate to winning on the final scoreboard. On Wednesday night against Baylor, ASU took the ending frame, 32-30. On Thursday night against Syracuse, it won the final period by an even greater margin, 54-44.

That could leave a lot to be said about the Sun Devils’ play through the first 20 minutes.

The first half was seemingly the Buddy Boeheim show. Boeheim was far from the most athletic player on the court, but the structure of Syracuse’s lineup combined with the hands-off nature of ASU’s defense enabled him to thrive.

In the Orange’s starting lineup, Buddy possessed the second smallest stature above Girard III, who’s listed at 6-foot-1. His father, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, only used three substitutes in the first period, two of whom were taller than Buddy – his 6-foot-6 frame was almost always second-to-last of his four other teammates on the court. Therefore, the only ASU guard that could seemingly match up was Neal, who played just six of the first half’s 20 minutes.

All of that together combined with ASU’s unseen full-court pressure, and the result was Buddy Boeheim constantly working with mismatches in Syracuse’s half-court offense.

The better portion of Boeheim’s 17 first-half points came on controlled drives to the mid-range level of the court, followed by some version of a high-releasing turnaround or pull-up jumper over the smaller ASU guards.

Hurley’s Sun Devils had enough trouble containing Boeheim, but their struggles were compounded on the offensive end.

Though they showed flashes of efficient offense, ASU’s guards didn’t seem to place emphasis on feeding the ball to their forwards in the high-post, nor did they consistently enact effective penetration to potentially crash Syracuse’s 2-3 zone.

As a result, ASU missed out on high-percentage opportunities inside the circle and cleaner looks outside it. For the half, the team shot an inefficient 40.6% from the field and a notably worse 25% on three-pointers.

The final was closer than the first half since the Sun Devils showed the wherewithal to address their deficiencies out of halftime.

Over the course of the final 20 minutes of play, Hurley’s backcourt made an asserted effort to get the high-post at least one touch on most possessions, which produced wonders for the team’s ball movement and flow offensively.

As such, ASU’s 54 second-half points came at a phenomenal 48.6% clip from the field and a 47.8% clip from beyond the arc, not to mention its improved figure in the assists department. By comparison, ASU’s 14 assists in the final period equaled Syracuse’s total for the game.

On the defensive end, Hurley activated a full-court trap defense five minutes into the frame, looking to pick up Buddy Boeheim earlier and keep him from getting comfortable in Syracuse’s half-court flow. Considering the senior’s rather average quickness, the method worked to a tee just as it did in the Orange’s loss against a pressure-packed VCU defense on Wednesday night.

Boeheim registered just six points on 1-7 shooting across the second-half, three of which came after Hurley implemented the defensive shift.

Despite Thursday night marking ASU’s third-straight defeat, it could very well be a positive sign that Hurley’s locker-room adjustments were promptly executed by his players.

The Sun Devils compete in their final matchup of the Battle4Atlantis Tournament against the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers (4-2) on Friday at 5:00 p.m. MST.