(Photo: Maya Diaz/WCSN)
TEMPE — Entering Wednesday night’s matchup against Cal Poly, Arizona State basketball has gotten off to a better start than anybody expected. The Sun Devils’ only loss on the season came to a top-ten Gonzaga team in a game the ASU led for a long time and was clearly competitive throughout.
However, one problematic trend has revealed itself, and it hurt the Sun Devils against the Mustangs again. So far, ASU is the team that plays to its competition. Against Santa Clara, GCU and Gonzaga — all teams ranked in the top 100 on Kenpom — the Sun Devils have looked like a team that can compete with the best of them and even come out with wins against former tournament teams.
Against Idaho State, St. Thomas and now Cal Poly, who all rank below 100+ spots below ASU on the KenPom, the Sun Devils have had to grind out wins and different parts of their game looked lost. On Wednesday, it was the defense and the free throw shooting that abandoned ASU (5-1) in a 93-89 win over the Mustangs (3-3).
“I think one of our strengths is balance,” ASU head coach Bobby Hurley said. “We have a number of guys that could impact the offensive end. It’s just we didn’t have enough of those guys doing it on the defensive end tonight.”
One thing that has not been a problem for the Sun Devils since their embarrassing 55-point performance against Idaho State has been their offensive efficiency. In a departure from the typical team under Hurley that plays consistent defense but struggles to create good offense, ASU has now scored 80+ points in each of its five games since opening night.
With six of ASU’s seven scorers getting into double-digits on Wednesday, the Sun Devils crossed the 90-point threshold for the first time this season, a feat they didn’t accomplish a single time in 2023.
“When you share the sugar, everybody gets to eat,” redshirt senior guard Adam Miller said. “We were just sharing the ball. I think when we continue to understand the pace of the game and everybody has a chance to score, we will continue to get even better.”
The game was a story of two halves for the offense. In the first half, it was a freshman frenzy with guard Joson Sanon and center Jayden Quaintance leading the way for the Sun Devils. Coming off the bench since GCU, Sanon has found his role as ASU’s best shooter, and his gorgeous jumper was working in the first half.
The Massachusetts native finished with 15 first half points on 6-of-9 shooting from the field and two threes. One of his threes he caught the pass in the corner and hit the shot while fading out of bounds. Through six games, Sanon has already put himself on the shortlist of shooters under Hurley.
While Sanon has been ASU’s offensive rookie phenom, Quaintance has been as revelatory as Sanon but in other spots on the floor, and he showed it again in the first half against the Mustangs. He finished with nine points, six rebounds and four blocks in the first half. These aren’t just your normal blocks under the basket, either. Quaintance is closing down on three-point shots, and his length makes even open threes difficult.
In the first half alone, Quaintance blocked two threes and disrupted another, causing an airball.
Although ASU got huge performances out of its freshman in the first half, 14 first-half points on four threes from Cal Poly’s graduate guard Jarred Hyder kept the game within eight points at the break. Even though the Mustangs did not grab a lead for the game’s entire 40 minutes, they stayed on ASU’s tail like horse flies.
The one place that Cal Poly took advantage of the Sun Devils was in transition. Despite ASU dominating on the boards by nearly doubling the Mustangs’ rebounds 44-24, Cal Poly was still able to get out in transition extremely often, negating ASU’s size and length advantage for easy buckets at the basket.
The Sun Devils entered the game with just seven players in their rotation due to the absences of freshman guard Austin Nunez and senior center Shawn Phillips Jr., which could have resulted in some fatigue. But Cal Poly finished with 24 fast break points compared to ASU’s 11.
“We just didn’t have a lot of pop to how we played,” Hurley said. “Our shell was broken too. We got to get back to the drawing board. We got to spread out. Guys were just driving to the basket, and at times, there was no recognition on the help side to rotate over at all. I know they have shooters, but we have to be in a good help position.”
Easy fast-break points and timely threes kept the Mustangs in the game until the very end, but ASU kept them in it by not cashing in on opportunities from the free-throw line.
Entering Wednesday, the Sun Devils ranked in the top 100 teams in the country in free-throw percentage, hitting 74% of their attempts from the charity Stripe. However, that number fell to just 65% against Cal Poly, and a lot of ASU’s misses were crucial.
The Sun Devils missed four free throws in the final four minutes of the game, all from different players. Although it ended up not making the difference, if this game turned out just a little bit differently, the Sun Devils could have had their free throw shooting to blame for losing to a team that ranks 236 spots below them on Kenpom.
“If all the guys just do what they’re supposed to do and shoot 90%, free throws shouldn’t be a problem,” Hurley said.
The Sun Devils have eight games left on their schedule against teams currently ranked within the top 25, so if ASU can keep playing to the level of its competition, that would make for one extremely interesting debut season as members of the Big 12.
“(Cal Poly) doesn’t have as much talent, so they got to do a couple things differently,” Miller said. “At the end of the day, they’re still a team, so they’re going to be good at something. They’re working in the summer, just like us.”
