(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
A poor start to conference play brought about plenty of questions for No. 21 ASU men’s basketball. In an 80-66 win over Colorado on Saturday, the Sun Devils (16-5, 4-5 Pac-12) answered the biggest one: What is their identity?
ASU is a perimeter-oriented team that thrives when it can get out and run. In the first eight and a half games of conference play, the Sun Devils didn’t produce enough of those opportunities, and as a result the “good looks” weren’t falling at the same clip as non-conference.
The second half of Saturday’s contest was a positive reversion to previous habits. From ASU’s perspective, it was only a matter of time before those shots started falling again.
“You don’t do it for two months and then it goes away,” ASU coach Bobby Hurley said. “It sure felt good for me to see numerous guys make big shots throughout that (second) half.”
After an ugly, arrhythmic first half against the Buffaloes, ASU decided to leave its shooting struggles in the halftime locker room. The Sun Devils were fed up with the way things were going and put on a tantalizing display in the final 20 minutes, scoring 30 of their final 48 points from three-point territory.
Hurley called it a “breakthrough.” Shannon Evans couldn’t remember the last time he had that much fun in a game. It’s still been over a month since ASU won two in a row, but this could be a turning point.
The Sun Devils know that something has changed, but they’ve felt this way before. Wins over No. 5 Kansas and No. 8 Xavier featured dynamic offensive performances, as did nearly all of ASU’s non-conference games. Saturday felt a lot like November and December.
“As many guys that were making big plays one after another,” Hurley said. “It looked like a lot of what I saw through a lot of the season.”
The formula for ASU’s offensive success hasn’t changed. In its first 12 games, this team could afford to run it up thanks to blistering shooting numbers, but it would do so by forcing turnovers and flying around on the defensive end.
“I loved our defensive effort,” Hurley said. “We were able to create 17 turnovers, and that’s kind of the activity that we’ve shown through most of non-conference.
“It carried over to getting us in the open court and definitely bought us some time to get our offense in gear.”
Defense to offense — even in games where ASU allows a lot of points — is a solution to the Sun Devils’ recent struggles. A common thread in ASU’s victories is a willingness to impose its will on the opponent. The shots aren’t just going to appear out of thin air and fall at whim — they have to be worked for and created as a product of turnovers or stops.
The first half of ASU’s Pac-12 schedule is over. If the Sun Devils finish strong, they can look back on these nine games as the necessary adversity that forced them to define an identity.
If this team is serious about making a run in March, it will embrace that identity and turn a win over Colorado into a springboard. The Sun Devils can only sink or swim from here on out.
