By Adam Beadle
Multimedia Staff
It’s a new year for Arizona State men’s basketball, but the Sun Devils couldn’t have gotten off to a more uninspiring start.
The Sun Devils squeaked by Idaho State Tuesday night in a 55-48 win. The narrow victory against a team picked to finish near the bottom of the Big Sky Conference forced Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley to be blatently honest postgame.
“I felt like we were soft out there, and there was no fight, especially in the second half,” Hurley said.
Despite leading since the 7:53 mark in the first half, the Bengals outscored the Sun Devils 28-24 in the second and remained in the game until the very end.
“Very frustrated by how we came out to start the second half,” Hurley said. “I described it like it was an AAU game, how we approached it, a game that had no meaning to it. Especially in the first game, you would imagine there’s just a lot of juice, you know the guys are really amped up to play and then the last thing you would think you’d have to worry about is being motivated.”
Idaho State finished the game shooting just over 25 percent, something Hurley said makes the fact the game was so close a rare commodity. But the Sun Devils' struggles to crash the glass attributed to that fact.
“If that team got 16 offensive rebounds, some of our other opponents, as we start hitting the harder part of our scheduling, are going to get like a million offensive rebounds in a game,” Hurley said.
Hurley believes the performance he saw on the floor from ASU is not the same efficiency in practice.
“Unless both units aren’t any good at guarding someone, and it just appears we look better on offense because both teams aren’t good on defense, what we’re doing on offense right now, I just didn’t see that in our practices,” Hurley said.
ASU’s issues on offense and rebounding are especially rare for one player, particularly freshman forward Jayden Quaintance. Quaintance, who went to the bench after committing two fouls within the game's first two minutes, finished with only one rebound on the night.
He missed all six shots he took from the field and struggled to grab rebounds, but Quaintance still found ways to help defensively, accumulating six blocks throughout the game. Yet, his performance was not one Hurley is typically used to seeing.
“I don’t know if the fouls messed him up mentally early in the game, but he was kind of out of it today,” Hurley said. “I didn’t know if I’d ever watch a game where he got one rebound.”
Quaintance’s rough start contributed to ASU’s troubles early in the game. The Sun Devils were outscored 11-3 through the first three minutes and 43 seconds of the game but finally hit an offensive rhythm, going on a 7-0 run in under two minutes.
The Sun Devils found themselves even at 16 with the Bengals for a short time, during which ASU's energy looked low. It wasn’t until after the under-eight media timeout that the Sun Devils started to cook offensively, going on a 15-0 run that lasted around six minutes.
ASU was lighting it up from deep. Senior guard Alston Mason, who finished with a team-high 14 points, knocked down back-to-back threes, and freshman guard Joson Sanon made a nice hesi move before fading away and draining a three of his own.
ASU’s efficiency from beyond the arc and fast-paced offense would give the Sun Devils an 11-point lead at the break, but the end of the first half may have been the peak of ASU’s offensive performance.
The Sun Devils were outscored 14-10 through the first 10 minutes of the second half, struggling to contest for rebounds. At this point, it was evident that Quaintance was not having the game he may have imagined having. You could tell he was nervous and was just getting bullied by Bengal defenders on the floor.
Idaho State was outscoring ASU 22-14 with just over five minutes left in the second half. ASU, struggling to make any shots on offense, would find itself only up one.
But in came one of the returning members of last year’s team, senior forward Shawn Phillips, who jumped up and slammed the ball down hard, extending ASU’s lead and giving the Sun Devils the momentum they needed to close out the game.
Hurley said he knows his team is capable of doing more than what it did Tuesday night, and they’ll have to figure it out quickly.
“I think there’s got to be ownership through everybody, right down the line, starting with me,” Hurley said. “We’re playing two teams the next two games. I think we have the chance to look like NCAA tournament-caliber teams, so we gotta fix this thing quick.”
ASU will travel to Las Vegas this weekend to play against former ASU head coach Herb Sendek and Santa Clara before traveling to Spokane, Wash. to face top-ranked Gonzaga.
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