Sun Devils make statement with win over Santa Clara in Vegas

(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)

LAS VEGAS — One exhibition and one game into the 2024-25 Arizona State men’s basketball season, warning bells were already ringing. A 50-point loss to the Duke and a narrow escape in the season-opener against Idaho State showed an ASU team that had not gelled despite bringing the strongest recruiting class in program history.

The two performances were so embarrassing that ASU traveled to Las Vegas as five-point underdogs against a Santa Clara team out of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). Additionally, the Broncos have a familiar face at their helm. Former ASU head coach Herb Sendek, the predecessor to current head coach Bobby Hurley, mans the sidelines for a Santa Clara team that has tournament aspirations.

Well, ASU fans can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now, as the Sun Devils (2-0) shot their way to an 81-74 victory over Santa Clara (1-1).

“It was a matter of these guys learning to gel and play together and learn each other,” Hurley said. “As much as you work to try and do that on the practice court, it’s hard to simulate it in real games, so happy to see that that was starting to take shape right now.”

One of the largest critiques of the Sun Devils in the Hurley era has been the team’s inconsistency from beyond the arc. Last season, ASU ranked near the bottom of the nation in three-point percentage, and during the Sun Devils first two displays on the court, that trend seemed to be continuing. On Friday, ASU looked like a completely different team.

In the first half alone, ASU matched its first game three-point total, and of its nine made field goals in the first 20 minutes, seven of them were threes. Additionally, the threes were coming in from multiple different sources as six different Sun Devils hit a shot from beyond the arc.

“I feel like we can make 20-25 a game,” senior wing BJ Freeman said. “That’s how confident I am in our shooters. We still had an off night, but we still got the job done playing defense.”

The Sun Devils clearly came into this game with a plan to attack the Broncos from beyond the arc. ASU identified that Santa Clara crashes on drives aggressively, opening up opportunities from the corners, and the Sun Devils took advantage.

By the game’s end, ASU hit 15 of its 37 attempts from deep.

“We gotta give kudos to the coaches,” redshirt senior guard Adam Miller said. “They told us that they were cracking down hard. They’re gonna rotate hard. Kick out into one mores. In the first half, we had a lot of turnovers. That second half, we settled down, and we started to find each other.”

Seeing ASU finally drain three-pointers efficiently is encouraging, but arguably, the more encouraging topic coming out of Friday’s game is the amount of scoring they got from different names. Four different Sun Devils finished in double digits, a combination that was split between two upperclassmen and two freshmen, which is exactly what Hurley was dreaming of when he brought in three top-rated rookies.

Freeman and Miller led the Sun Devils in scoring with 17 and 16, respectively. Supplementing the upperclassmen were a pair of freshmen in wing Amier Ali and guard Joson Sanon. Both players ended with four made field goals as Ali finished with 13 and Sanon finished with 11.

The pair of freshmen split up their production. Sanon was crucial in ASU getting off to a good start in the first half with two quick threes, and Ali was a constant threat from beyond the arc, finishing with four triples — two of which were clutch buckets in the second half.

The mix between the upperclassmen and the freshmen is exactly what Hurley expected when he put together this roster.

“There’s a number of guys that could be playmakers, and we just have to trust to make the right play and share the ball the right way,” Hurley said. “Then good things will happen.”

After scoring only two points on free throws against Idaho State, freshman center Jayden Quaintance scored his first collegiate field goal with a dunk in the second half. The scoring wasn’t quite there as he finished with just five points, but after finishing with just one rebound in game one, Quaintance responded with 12 rebounds against the Broncos.

With six blocks in the first game and 12 rebounds in the second, Quaintance is flashing his potential. It is just a matter of time before he puts it all together.

“(Quaintance’s) motor was going,” Hurley said. “He was really disruptive on defense again. He could guard multiple people. He’s got to be one of the best defensive players in the country for his class just the variety of ways he can impact defensively, and that also is rebounding. He’s got the motor and the athletic ability in the body to go get those rebounds”.

Herb Sendek has seen an ASU freshman contribute to winning before. In 2008-09, then-freshman James Harden took Sendek’s Sun Devils from 8-22 in the coach’s first year to 21-12 in Sendek’s second season.

That era of Sun Devil basketball feels long ago, but it was the era of basketball Hurley was brought in to replicate with three highly-ranked freshmen already contributing to winning and a stable of veterans that can carry the burden when the freshman struggle. Maybe that era is finally here.

“We wanted to show our crowd and our fans back home that we actually can play basketball,” Freeman said. “We’re here to win. We’re not here to just slack.”