Sun Devils travel to Cincinnati and West Virginia looking to end losing streak

(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)

Following an optimistic non-conference start, Arizona State men’s basketball has fallen flat in Big 12 conference play, beginning its first losing streak of the year. It has been a frustrating three games, with the Sun Devils blowing a halftime lead to No. 9 Kansas, rallying from a 15-point deficit against No. 25 Baylor to force overtime, only to lose in the end, and scoring 89 points only to fall to UCF in the last minute.

If the stretch feels relatively familiar when it comes to ASU men’s hoops, it’s because on this day last year, ASU men’s basketball, who currently stands at a record of 10-6, also sat at 10-6. Except that squad flipped the script, starting poorly in non-conference play and then beginning conference play, strong. Whereas this season, ASU was one Colorado loss away from having the poorest conference record in the Big 12.

There must be a lot of hope that the current season’s start won’t go the same way as last seasons, as the 2023-2024 team that began the season 10-6 the previous season would lose six of their next seven games and sit 11-12 by February 8th.

This Saturday’s game against Cincinnati is where any glimmer of hope in a season can quickly disappear. Only five Big 12 teams have yet to win two conference games, including the Sun Devils and Bearcats, so unlike their recent three-game span that included two AP top 25 teams and another conference fifth-place program, Cincinnati is a little more ASU’s speed.

The Cincinnati Bearcats have been a mixed bag this season, but have some positive statistics to back up some of their play, including standing second in the conference in opposing PPG, which one may argue was due to their middling non-conference schedule, but they also just recently held Kansas to their lowest scoring game of the season and only allowed 54 points.

Three unranked losses to underperforming teams like Kansas State and Villanova, as well as a loss to Arizona, have quickly made Cinicinanti look like a team that might not survive in the competitive Big 12. If you can’t compete against the unranked teams in or outside your conference, it could be pretty indicative of how they’ll play against the giants that sit at the top of the Big 12.

They’ve been able to defend, but they sure haven’t been able to convert that momentum into offense on the other end. While their defense ranks second to first in the conference, their offense ranks second to last in the conference, with a subpar 72.8 PPG, their highest scorer at 12.5 PPG, and their two lowest scoring games of the season, back-to-back 40-point games against No. 25 Baylor and Kansas as low points of their season offensively.

The Bearcats will need to win this game defensively if they hope to defeat a highly productive ASU club that just scored 89 points against UCF without their top scorer, rookie guard Joson Sanon. Sanon’s status is unknown for Saturday’s game.

Cincinnati leads the conference in opponent three-point percentage, which is ASU’s bread and butter. If they can shut off ASU beyond the arc, the Bearcats may pose problems for the Sun Devils.

While Cincinnati is a fairly predictable team, the West Virginia Mountaineers are a complex case, they have defeated some of the nation’s top teams, including No. 16 Gonzaga, No. 9 Kansas and Arizona, but recent losses to Arizona in their second-season matchup and No. 10 Houston have kept them just outside of the AP top 25.

ASU’s next two games will be quite similar in terms of what to expect from the two teams, albeit on two different levels. West Virginia, like Cincinnati, is a program that is bottom four in offensive PPG and top four in defensive PPG, which have helped them upset teams like Kansas but also saw the Mountaineers lose games to Houston.

To defeat West Virginia, you need to contain senior guard Javon Small, who is among the NCAA’s top scorers with a PPG of 19.4—23rd in the nation. Small leads the team in points, assists, and steals. Since the Mountaineers only have three players that score more than ten points every game, his performance on any given night is crucial to their offensive output.

The Sun Devils have shown that they can compete when they can stop elite players like Hunter Dickinson and Julian Hammond III, however, they have dropped games when they are unable to contain stars such as Richie Saunders and Keyshawn Hall, as they did against BYU and UCF.

A stretch like this will not make or break their season, but you’d think that at this point in the season, ASU needs to start finding ways to win games they aren’t favored to win. Games against Cincinnati should be penciled in as wins, while games against teams like West Virginia should be games the Sun Devils struggle in, but ASU has lost, won, and competed in games no one expected them to win this season. They just need to prove they can do so in Big 12 play.