For 10 years now, the Arizona State men's basketball team has traveled down to Tucson with the hopes of silencing one of the most rowdy fan environments in the nation. And as of Sunday, they are zero for ten.
The Wildcats and their faithful contingent put to rest any hopes of a Sun Devil upset in convincing fashion with a 97-79 win.
"I don't think there's any doubt that we're a good basketball team," head coach Rob Evans said. "But this is a tough environment to play, and when they got fatigued, our concentration level waned a little bit."
Despite the lopsided loss, there's still plenty of confidence in the locker room that this team can build off their promising 11-2 start.
"This was just the first of 19 (Pac-10) games and we've got a long season still ahead," Evans said. "We've got to go back tomorrow and start getting ready for the next two games (Cal/Stanford)."
Arizona State held a lead for most of the first half behind the shooting of Kevin Kruger. Kruger hit three three-pointers to give the Sun Devils and early 27-18 advantage.
Arizona center Channing Frye answered with a 6-point play following an intentional foul on Kruger. Frye hit the shot off the foul, made both free-throws and then hit another lay-in to cut the Sun Devil lead to three.
"I had him on the ground before he even thought about shooting, but they called the intentional foul and there's nothing I can do about it," Kruger said. "I wasn't trying to tackle him, I just wanted to keep him from falling and I don't thing that qualifies as an intentional foul."
The story of the first half, however, was the play of Mustafa Shakur, who lit up the scoreboard with 15 points on six of eight shooting. Shakur also hit all three of his attempts from beyond the arc, each of which brought the crowd to its feet. He put the finishing touches on an exciting first half with a coast to coast lay-in that chewed up the final seven seconds.
"I thought we played pretty well for the first twenty minutes or so," Evans said. "But we got fatigued and they turned up the pressure a bit and got some easy transition baskets."
The Arizona momentum carried into the second half as the Wildcats widened their lead to 10 in just two minutes. The Sun Devils cut the lead to 57-52 with 14 minutes remaining, but that's as close as they would get for the rest of the afternoon.
The Wildcats opened the floodgates midway through the half behind Salim Stoudamire's 15 points which included four three-pointers. The trio of Stoudamire, Frye, and Shakur teamed up for 59 points, 24 of which came from three-point land.
Ike Diogu continued his impressive season with his seventh double-double of the season with 23 points and 11 rebounds. Diogu silenced an "overrated" chant from the boisterous Arizona pep band with 14 second half points and a game-high five blocks.
"This is disappointing because we know we're a better team than the way we played tonight," Diogu said. "But it's just one game and we're not going to let this ruin the rest of our season. We have a lot to accomplish and this is only our second loss of the season so we're not going hang our heads over this one."
Reach the reporter at brian.knapp@asu.edu.
