ASU Men’s Basketball: Paint play key without Hurley, Heath against USC

(Photo: Marlee Smith/WCSN)

At 9:00 p.m. MST on Monday night, Arizona State Men’s Basketball (6-10, 2-4 Pac-12) will cap its brief two-game stint out west against No. 16 ranked USC (16-2, 6-2 Pac-12) without the likes of head coach Bobby Hurley and sophomore guard Jay Heath.

Per Pac-12 Conference Commissioner George Kliavkoff in a recent press release, Hurley and Heath will each serve one-game suspensions in light of their heated exchanges with referees at the conclusion of ASU’s 79-76 loss to Stanford on Saturday. The game’s historically disparate free throw differential of 32 was believed to be the central source of conflict.

“The actions of the head coach and student-athletes were in clear violation of the Conference’s standards of conduct, and will not be tolerated,” Kliavkoff said.

While all involved parties from ASU were disciplined in some way, severity of the repercussions varied.

As an affiliated employee, Hurley endured the brunt of the conference’s punishment. Aside from his Monday suspension, Hurley was “publicly reprimanded” and fined $20,000, a sum that the Pac-12 indicated would go to the conference’s student-athlete scholarship fund.

As detrimental as Heath’s absence may turn out for ASU’s guard play, the slap on the wrist for junior forward Jalen Graham, who was identified as a passive culprit in the postgame fiasco, is a huge break and arguably more important for ASU heading into a matchup where interior production could be the runaway indicator of success.

USC Head Coach Andy Enfield’s recipe for success starts and ends with junior forward Isaiah Mobley. The 6-foot-10 captain has the dynamic of a modern-day forward while still possessing the traditional physicality to pull in rebounds on both ends of the floor. Mobley’s 14.8 points per game is fueled by a multi-level scoring attack and anchored by an efficient 47.3 field goal percentage and 41.4 three-point percentage. Even more significant, however, is Mobley’s 8.8 rebounds per game, which paces the Pac-12 and defines a crucial component of the Trojans’ identity in 2022.

Outside of No. 3 ranked Arizona, USC is the only other Pac-12 team to boast 40-plus rebounds on average, thanks primarily to Mobley and his partner-in-crime in the frontcourt: senior forward Chevez Goodwin.

Coming off tame averages of 5.6 points and 3.5 rebounds a season ago, Goodwin has embraced his starting role in the absence of Isaiah Mobley’s younger brother and No. 3 overall 2021 NBA Draft pick Evan Mobley. Across 18 games, Goodwin has elevated his activity in the scoring and rebounding departments to 12.8 points per game and 7.5 rebounds per game thus far.

When zooming out, the nature of USC’s team numbers in conference wins and losses agree with the impact of individual performers like Mobley and Goodwin.

USC’s close call against Washington State earlier in the season had a lot to do with its struggle to dominate the glass, a detail that has been typically glaring in its comfortable wins this season. Despite escaping Pullman with a two-point victory, the Trojans lost the rebounding battle.

Furthermore, the two definitive blemishes on USC’s record paint an even clearer picture of the statistical categories ASU will likely need to gear its efforts toward.

In its double-digit loss to Oregon, USC finished the night with the advantage in total boards but were edged in interior scoring. Against Stanford, USC took both categories but by slim margins.

Outrebounding the Trojans may be an unrealistic expectation for an ASU squad that hasn’t finished many games with such an advantage, but the recent surge in the Sun Devils’ paint production helps its chances. In each of its past two wire-to-wire contests with Utah and Stanford, ASU comfortably outscored the opposition’s interior offense, boasting such point differentials of 14 and 18 in its respective outings.

The Monday night showdown at the Galen Center in Los Angeles will be televised on ESPN.