Patience, it has been said, is a virtue.
The ASU men's basketball team will have to embrace this thought tonight when they travel to Pullman, Wash., to take on the deliberate Dick Bennett and Washington State.
In his first year on the job, Bennett has brought a precise and methodical style of play to the Pacific Northwest in hopes of transforming the Cougars (8-9, 2-5 Pac-10) from a basement dweller in the Pac-10, to a legitimate contender.
Bennett recently said the change has been tougher this season with an older group of players as opposed to the relative inexperience he had acquired in his previous jobs.
"I think it's been hard for (the players), without question," Bennett said. "It's probably a little harder for them to change their habits and ways of thinking, but they've tried.
"We often look like a different team Monday through Wednesday than we do on Thursdays and Saturdays [days of Pac-10 games]."
Most recently, Bennett coached at Wisconsin from 1995 through 2000, and took the Badgers to the Final Four in 2000.
With Bennett's new style of play, the Cougars have scored more than 70 points just twice this season, but WSU is the best in the Pac-10 at limiting turnovers, averaging only 12.5 a game.
"(Facing the Cougars) will be a difficult assignment because of the way they play," ASU head coach Rob Evans said. "They try to make you play defenses for long stretches of time, so you have to be disciplined on the defensive end."
The Sun Devils have won the past four games against WSU. ASU's average margin of victory in the teams' past three matchups has been 42 points. The Sun Devils have also been solid on the road against the Cougars, winning five of the past six in Pullman.
Because of the relative youth of ASU - which features eight players seeing their first Division I action this season - Evans believes his team's history against WSU will have no bearing on this year's results.
"That has nothing to do with anything," Evans said. "They are playing a lot different basketball."
Tonight's game will also be a reunion of sorts for ASU's Steve Moore. The junior swingman played in high school with WSU's Marcus Moore (no relation) at Dominguez High School in Los Angeles, one of the nation's powerhouses for prep basketball.
The two played together briefly during the summer, but this will be the first time they will go head-to-head in Pac-10 play.
"It's going to be kind of fun," Steve Moore said. "We're going to see how developed each of our games are. He got a lot better and I hope he thinks I got a lot better."
Marcus Moore is leading the Cougars in scoring, averaging 12.8 points per game while Steve Moore is second on ASU and ninth in the conference in scoring, with 15.1 per game.
Reach the reporter at jeffrey.hoodzow@asu.edu.
