(Photo: Haley Spracale)
TEMPE – After a four-game losing streak, and a loss of confidence across the board, Arizona State men’s basketball (16-7, 7-5 Pac-12) needed a win to get back on track.
On Thursday night against Oregon State (9-14, 3-9 Pac-12), the Sun Devils returned to their winning ways, defeating the Beavers 68-57.
“You lose four in a row, you feel like are we ever going to win a game again, no matter how good a season you’ve had,” head coach Bobby Hurley said. “I’m happy for the guys, feel good for them because they’ve had a great season that they could get this out of their system and get back on the winning track.”
When the Sun Devils were riding high earlier in the season, they were driven by the energy created on the defensive end. Over their four-game losing streak, ASU strayed away from its identity, forcing the team to reevaluate its status.
“We had a couple of meetings, like five meetings for that four-game stretch,” senior guard Devan Cambridge said postgame. “I feel like everybody listened, and everybody’s locked in.”
ASU seemed locked in coming out of the gates. The Sun Devils opened the first half with 18 points in the first eight minutes of the game. But Oregon State was able to keep it tight by way of three 3-pointers from freshman guard Jordan Pope, his third 3 tying the game at 18 with 12 minutes to go in the first half.
Despite the game being tied, ASU’s offense looked its best since the first half of the UCLA game, distributing all over the court in order to get the best shot. ASU’s first six made baskets were assisted, and the trend continued the rest of the game as 18 of its 22 baskets came on the end of an assist.
“We had 18 out of 22 assisted baskets on offense. That’s what we’re striving for,” Hurley said. “We’ve been pretty good at that when we played well, so happy to see the sharing of the basketball.”
As the first half went on, the Sun Devils found their rhythm before their last four losses. However, in the last seven minutes of the first half, the Beavers outscored the Sun Devils 16-8, including a stretch where Oregon State went on a 10-0 run in just 1:39.
Despite trailing by four points at the half, the Sun Devils came out firing to start the second, opening the half with a 14-7 run. The biggest contributors over that run were Devan and his brother, fifth-year senior Desmond Cambridge. The two brothers accounted for nine of the Sun Devils’ first 14 points in the half and ended the game as the team’s two leading scorers, with 14 and 18, respectively.
So far this season, when the Cambridge brothers play well, the Sun Devils tend to win. Devan has scored double-digit points 11 times so far this year, and ASU is 11-0 in those games.
“It feels good,” Devan said about his streak. “But it doesn’t really matter about scoring. I’m happy if I get a dunk every game, you know, just playing defense, just doing the dirty stuff that the team needs.”
In the second half, the Cambridge brothers also led the effort on a much improved second-half defense. After allowing the Beavers to shoot 52.2 percent from the field, the Sun Devils’ defense returned to its stellar form in the second half, holding the Beavers to 30.8 percent shooting in the second half.
An even more drastic improvement was the Sun Devils’ ability to guard the three. In the first half, the Beavers shot lights out, shooting 46.2 percent from deep, but after halftime, that number dropped to 18.2 percent on 11 shots.
“I thought we were rotating well and closing out well,” Hurley said about his team’s three-point defense. “It was definitely something we discussed at halftime. The one we left (Jordan) Pope open, they’re out of bounds. Everyone kind of went to the cutter, and he shot at one right in front of our bench with no one round. So, we just had to do a better job of contesting those. I thought we did that second half.”
With Oregon coming to Tempe on Saturday, the Sun Devils hope to sweep the state of Oregon for the first time since 2009-10. A four-game losing streak is tough on any team, but the Sun Devils believe that they are closer than they were before.
“We definitely went through some growing pains,” Desmond said. “Especially just four losses back to back, that’s hard mentally on us. Just to stay consistent in practice, keep a good energy good attitude, and we figured it out. We just kept sticking to it. We didn’t change anything. We did get closer as a team, just holding each other more accountable, being able to take constructive criticism from each other. I think we grew in that because this game, it wasn’t easy, but we had mistakes all around, and we figured out how to get the win.”
