Four takeaways from ASU’s 68-65 loss to USC

(Photo: Max Zepeda/WCSN)

As the Arizona State men’s basketball regular season comes to a close, fans have gone through what was a roller coaster of a season. Hysterical highs and crushing lows have defined the Sun Devils’ 2022-23 regular season campaign.

The finale against USC (22-9, 14-6 Pac-12) was a microcosm of the Sun Devils (20-11, 11-8 Pac-12) season, as a furious late push was not enough to overcome familiar ASU shooting struggles in a roller coaster 68-65 game.

With their NCAA Tournament hopes possibly hanging in the balance, the Sun Devils delivered perhaps their worst shooting performance of the season, shooting 29.2% from the field and an even worse 21.4% from three.

Here are four takeaways from the Sun Devils’ final performance before the Pac-12 Tournament in Vegas.

Familiar Flaws

Throughout the season, there has been one thing that has stood out about the 2022-23 Sun Devil team. They are not a very good shooting team, but, despite the worst 3-point shooting percentage in the conference, ASU has averaged the second-most three-point attempts per game.

In Saturday night’s loss, ASU’s shooting struggles reared its ugly head once again. The Sun Devils’ 29.1% field goal percentage was second to only the abysmal 27.6% shooting performance against San Francisco.

ASU picked a bad night to have a poor shooting performance, none worse than fifth-year guard Desmond Cambridge Jr. The hero of last week’s buzzer-beater win over Arizona had one of his worse performances of the season, scoring five points on a 9% shooting percentage, both lows in Pac-12 play.

Cambridge’s 1-for-9 performance from behind the three-point line was representative of the three-point performance as a whole. The Sun Devils shot 21.4% from beyond the arc, which barely cracks the bottom five of season performances.

The Sun Devils’ poor shooting was perhaps the team’s biggest weakness, and it reared its ugly head for the final time in the regular season.

Horne Performs Well

In a night that many of the Sun Devils squad is gonna want to forget, junior guard DJ Horne had, statistically, one of his best performances of the season, tallying at least 20 points for the third time this season and the first time in conference play.

Horne finished the night scoring 20 on 35.3% shooting, adding three rebounds and three assists. The North Carolina native got the Sun Devils started early, knocking down back-to-back 3s in the opening five minutes of the first half.

Despite a solid opening 20 minutes, Horne did not score in the opening nine minutes of the second half. The drought was part of a nearly 16-minute stretch where the Sun Devils made only two field goals and saw the USC lead stretch to 11. With USC looking to extend the lead out of reach, Horne put ASU on his back, scoring the Sun Devils next seven points and cutting the USC lead down to just seven.

Horne added five more points down the stretch, and, as the Sun Devils’ hottest hand, he was trusted with the final shot with the chance to nearly relive the anarchy of a week, potentially sending the game to overtime. Horne got a solid shot off from the wing, but his three, like so many other shots Saturday night, bounced around the rim before falling to the ground.

Boogie Ellis Shines

Entering his final game in the Galen Center, senior guard Boogie Ellis appeared ready to play.

He wanted to make the most of his final few games in front of the Trojan crowd. In the Trojans’ previous two home games, Ellis scored a career-high 33 points against Stanford before topping it just under two weeks later in a 35-point performance in USC’s loss to Arizona.

While his 28 points on Saturday didn’t quite match those scoring outbursts, they were all the more important as senior guard Drew Peterson was limited due to a back injury, and junior center Joshua Morgan sat out most of the game in foul trouble.

The San Diego native was especially crucial down the stretch scoring 11 of the Trojans’ final 18 points as part of a dominant 17-point second-half performance.

As the Trojans look locked into an NCAA Tournament spot, Boogie Ellis will be a contributor on a USC team that looks to avenge last year’s tough Tournament loss to Miami.

Bubble Burst

ASU’s relationship with the NCAA Tournament under head coach Bobby Hurley has been rocky. At some points, like the beginning of the year, they appeared as a Tournament team and a team that could do some damage. At other times, the Sun Devils have looked like a team that has no business competing in March Madness.

In the last week, the Sun Devils looked like that team that fans saw open the season 15-3. As Cambridge’s buzzer-beater sank through the hoop, the Sun Devils’ had renewed hope at some potential Madness. Seven games and two days later, ASU has likely placed itself outside of the conversation of at-large bids.

The Sun Devils will head to the Pac-12 Tournament as the sixth seed and will open up with a game against the Oregon State Beavers, who they beat twice already this season. If the Sun Devils defeat the Beavers, ASU would then see these very same Trojans in the quarter-finals of the tournament.

The Sun Devils would at least have to win both of those games to have any chance at a Tournament berth, and they would likely have to beat Arizona in the semifinals to really solidify their position.