ASU men's basketball shocks No. 14 Kansas in 70-60 home finale

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Alan Deutschendorf:

Hello, I'm Alan Deutschendorf, sports editor here at the state press. I'm here with sports reporter, Pratham Villeri. We're going to talk a little bit about Bobby Hurley and the ASU basketball team. So this year has been a bit of a roller coaster. Can you give kind of like an up and down of how the season's been and compare it to how last season's gone so far? 

Pratham Valluri:

Yeah, I think in terms of the expectations coming into the season, last season was really a poor season under Bobby Hurley. I think that was a season where a lot of people were you know disappointed with with Hurley and the team in general in terms of the the talent that they had acquired for the roster in terms of the recruiting class was one of the best recruiting classes in the nation and they really had a terrible non -conference excuse me conference record and so coming into this year there really wasn't much expectations at all. They had a pretty nice non -conference start as they did last year, but once it got a conference play, especially in the Big 12, which is, you know, pretty clearly the best conference in college basketball you've got in Arizona was number one for a large part of the season, Kansas, Iowa State, Houston, a number of true championship contenders in the conference. It's followed a similar path where they haven't had immense success...

Alan Deutschendorf:

Hello, welcome back. We're going to get right into it with our first little game. We're going to have, Pratham, we're going to have you blind rank these five ASU Ben's basketball players based on how clutch they are. Not based off of talent, not based off of performance, just based off of clutch gene. And first one is the big man himself, Massamba Diop.

Pratham Valluri:

It's an interesting one because he's so young that we haven't really seen. He's not really someone that you go to for like a scoring option. I'm just trying to think who I would take over him because I definitely take Moe. Probably. Overall I think I go four for him just on clutching, but I mean just on clutching. We haven't seen too much of him either. Just clutch, yeah. Got But, again, to it, he's been a big -time rebounder in the Clutch in certain games as well. He doesn't really shoot a lot. He doesn't score a lot either. It is only scoring, or are we going in general? Just based off of Clutch, whatever you, so if you think, like, scoring, clutch moments, just whatever Clutch do you. If we're going to go scoring, I guess I'd go five, but he does have some good plays in the clutch, but I guess we'll go five for that. I'm going to go five.

To hear more from Pratham, please tune in to State Press Play.

Podcast edited by Trent Ashdown, Audrey Lippert, Caitlin Hawkinson and Matthew Marengo.