(Photo: Braidy Klain/WCSN)
Decisions, decisions.
With nine seconds left in regulation Thursday, ASU guard Shannon Evans hit a layup to put the No. 21 Sun Devils on top of Utah 69-66. ASU elected not to foul on the ensuing possession, allowing the Utes to hit a three-pointer that sent the game to overtime.
Arizona State (15-5, 3-5 Pac-12) couldn’t put it together in the extra period, dropping a much-needed home game 80-77. The decision not to foul in a crucial moment snowballed into one of their worst losses of the season.
From a team’s perspective, games aren’t lost on a single play. They’re lost in the middle of the first half, or on consecutive defensive possessions, or in a given statistical category. ASU head coach Bobby Hurley was focused on one stat in particular: His team shot just 40 percent from the field.
“We’ve got to connect when we have open shots,” Hurley said. “We didn’t do that consistently enough to score enough points to win.”
It’s been an inauspicious start to conference play for the Sun Devils. A 12-0 non-conference run seems further and further away with every round of Pac-12 bouts. ASU hasn’t won two games in a row in over a month.
Thursday’s game presented more of the same issues that have stymied the Sun Devils since the calendar flipped to 2018. They struggle to defend the perimeter, can’t find their shot on offense and don’t move the ball with the same rapid pace that they did before Pac-12 play.
ASU has made it easy for its conference foes to gameplan against them. If you slow the game down, pound the ball inside and weather the offensive flurries, the Sun Devils are very beatable.
That’s a problem, and it’s clearly frustrating for Hurley, who’s seen his team experience both ends of the college basketball spectrum this season.
“It’s hard to put your finger on it,” Hurley said. “When we have those opportunities, we’ve got to convert.”
Thursday was the opportunity for ASU to recapture the swagger that led to the upset victories and dominant performances of yesteryear. Instead, it was the Utes that swaggered off the court with a résumé-building victory.
The Sun Devils need a solution to their midseason identity crisis. Are they the team that trounced Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse, or are they on a fast track to finishing in the bottom half of the Pac-12?
Freshman guard Remy Martin, who never seems to be rattled by anything, said ASU needs to “move on” from its sluggish conference start and focus on getting better.
“We’ve got a long season still,” Martin said. “We’re fine. A lot of people think this is the end of the world because we lost this game, but we’re fine.”
Remaining even keel and focused in the coming weeks will be challenging. Nothing in sports can chip away at work ethic quite like losing. If the Sun Devils are going to get back to their previous level of play, they have no choice but to resist the urge to stand pat in their season’s darkest moment.
It’s not an easy decision to trudge through the darkness. ASU can’t dwell on past decisions if it wants to escape this slump — it can only ease the path toward the light at the end of the tunnel.
