By Adam Beadle
Multimedia Specialist
A poor defensive performance by Arizona State caused the Sun Devils to lose a game that may come back to haunt them when it comes time for the NCAA Tournament.
Dropping its third straight game in a row and its second straight at home to UCF in a high-scoring affair, 95-89.
Looking at the final score of this game versus a side-by-side preview of the matchup would induce a person to have two entirely different facial expressions.
The Knights, who shot an average of 33 percent before the matchup, shot an impressive 50.8 percent from the floor against ASU even without its starting 7-2 freshman center Moustapha Thiam, who has been fighting the flu since the Knights loss against Arizona last Saturday, according to UCFSports.com’s Brandon Helwig.
However, it didn’t matter because junior guard Keyshawn Hall, the Big 12's fifth-leading scorer, completely overtook the game.
Hall finished with a career-high 40 points, including a season-high 29 points in the first half, and shot a whopping 72.2 percent from the floor in the game.
“That kid put on a performance,” head coach Bobby Hurley said. “I’ve been doing this here for a while. I’m not sure that I’ve seen a kid play that well against me in one half of a game. Hats off to Hall. He was unbelievable.”
Even though ASU struggled at times defensively, Hurley doesn’t think there’s much to improve offensively. ASU shot 52.6 percent from the field and was without arguably its best shooter, freshman guard Joson Sanon.
Sanon did not play against ASU due to a right ankle injury that has been causing issues since before the Sun Devils' win over Colorado.
“I felt like we could get almost any shot we wanted if we just were patient enough,” Hurley said. “The offense was not the problem. It was really just our lack, or inability, to keep them off the free-throw line late in the game. We didn't come over and help the guards as they drove it. We couldn't get someone to come over and challenge it. I mean, [freshman guard Jayden Quaintance] had a few blocks, but we couldn’t do enough defensively. That was the problem.”
In reality, ASU couldn’t do enough defensively to stop Hall from putting on a clinic. Instead, Hall stopped himself from contributing to the total.
The talented guard ran into foul trouble very early on, only a fourth of the way into the second half, which caused him to sit for an extended period on the bench. At this point, not a single player on the floor for UCF had scored double-digits.
Hall’s absence from the floor allowed ASU to pull ahead and take the lead, which the Sun Devils did.
Out of the second media timeout in the second half, down by seven, the Sun Devils started firing shots off quickly. It only took ASU under two minutes to go on a 9-0 run and even the game at 69.
The Knights and the Sun Devils continued to trade leads throughout the latter end of the second half, in which BJ Freeman heavily contributed, scoring a season-high 26 points in a performance Hurley was enlightened by.
“I liked what he’s doing scoring,” Hurley said. “He’s doing great. He’s really, you know, coming into his own. He’s put more time in. I’ve noticed him working since before Colorado, just getting extra reps, working on his shot, [and] doing differntent things. I liked his passing tonight. He might of missed a couple guys, but he had a nice lob to [freshman forward Jayden Quaintance], and he’s going to draw a lot of attention. I think that’s an underrated skill that he has that he’s got to keep going to. His ability to find his teammates.”
With just under four minutes to go in the game, Hall checked back in for the Knights as they had a 2-point lead.
With Hall accumulating his fourth foul, Hurley, set on getting him out of the game, put Quaintance, who once again looked very mature on the floor given he’s only 17 years old, on him defensively.
But it didn’t work. Hall hit a two-point jumper to tie his previous career-high of 36 points with just 1:19 remaining in the game.
With ASU now in panic mode, it needed to find the perfect shot to stay in it. Hurley turned to senior guard Adam Miller, who sank a shot in the final seconds of regulation against Baylor last Saturday to send the Sun Devils and the Bears to overtime.
“I wanted to see if we could get [Miller] a three,” Hurley said.
Unfortunately, Hurley didn’t get the shot he had hoped for, as Miller fired off a shot from beyond and missed while multiple Knights defenders covered him.
“Maybe we could’ve gone empty-side ball screen with him and [Quaintance] and get him rolling and maybe get him something more toward the basket there,” Hurley said. “But I trust him, and he’s made a lot of big shots.”
UCF took advantage of ASU’s missed shots and was able to pull away in the end.
The Sun Devils will be challenged in a big way over the next ten days as they go on the road to face Cincinnati and West Virginia before coming back home on January 25th to take on No. 2 Iowa State.
Quaintance believes things need to change on the floor defensively.
“I feel like our rotations could be a little bit better at times,” Quaintance said. “Staying solid, like keeping people out of the paint, like we let a lot of paint touches happen, I feel. I feel like if we can cut that down a little better, maybe slide our feet a little better, and keep them out of the paint so they can’t make easy kick-outs and get us in rotation so easily, then that would help us a lot.”
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