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The search for back-to-back wins continues for the ASU men’s basketball team.Coupled with an inefficient offense and a high volume of turnovers, the Sun Devils (8-17, 4-9 Pac-12) dropped the back end of a two-game home stand to Colorado 63–49.
It's the fewest amount of points the Buffaloes (17-8, 9-4 Pac-12) allowed in a conference road win in 45 years. It's also their first Pac-12 conference sweep. They defeated ASU 69–54 at home on Jan. 19.
The shots weren’t falling for ASU on Saturday, as the team shot 35.8 percent from the floor. Nearly half of the Sun Devils’ 53 field goal attempts came from behind the arc, with the team shooting just 7-of-21 from 3-point range.
Freshman Jonathan Gilling led the team in scoring with 11 points on 4-of-12 shooting. Just two of his shots came from inside the arc.
The long range shooting could be attributed to sophomore forward Jordan Bachynski’s foul troubles. Following the three rebounds in the first 90 seconds of the game, Bachynski picked up two fouls with 15:40 left in the first half. He was replaced by junior forward Ruslan Pateev and remained limited in the first half.
Bachynski returned at the start of the second half and picked up two more fouls in the first 90 seconds. He had just two points and five rebounds in 14 minutes. Pateev finished with six points and six rebounds in 15 minutes.
“He’s really been playing well lately, so I think not having him in there hurt us a little bit,” junior guard Trent Lockett said. “He has to play smarter, but he knows that. He’ll be fine next game.”
Lockett had 10 points and four rebounds in his second game back from an ankle injury. His explosiveness hasn’t returned yet, but he managed to take half of the team’s free throw attempts.
ASU took just eight shots from the free throw line and shot 50 percent. Colorado took 14 more attempts at the charity stripe. Lockett went 2-for-4 and junior guard Chris Colvin went 2-for-3.
“Whether it was ball movement or if you want to talk about the attack mentality, we only took eight free throws in the game,” coach Herb Sendek said. “I’d like to see us get to the line for more than eight free throws.”
Colvin finished with four points, four rebounds and five assists off the bench in 28 minutes. He also had four of the team’s 17 turnovers. Sendek wants the team to decrease its amount of turnovers to 12 or less per game, but that goal has been accomplished just once this season against Fresno State.
ASU’s struggles to control the ball hamper its efforts on defense. Colorado took advantage by pushing the tempo in transition to create easy scoring opportunities.
The Buffaloes shot 45.7 percent from the field. They're now 17-0 when they have a higher shooting percentage than the opponent.
Colorado had three players in double figures. Freshman guard Spencer Dinwiddie had 15 points and five rebounds.
Sophomore forward Andre Roberson finished just one rebound shy of another double-double against ASU as he put up 12 points and nine boards.
“Our defensive field goal percentage that you see is really an illusion to some degree, because it's not against our defense, it's against our offense in so many situations,” Sendek said.
Reach the reporter at mtesfats@asu.edu
