LEXINGTON, Ky. – In head coach Bobby Hurley’s return to Rupp Arena, ASU men’s basketball withstood No. 5 Kentucky’s best hits for 20 minutes.
Then, in front of 23,665 fans decked out in blue, the Wildcats (9-1) surged to take command en route to a 72-58 win over the Sun Devils (6-3) Saturday afternoon despite ASU’s best effort to hang tough in one of the most rigorous games on its 2015-16 schedule.
“They were coming with a punch and we just weren’t swinging back,” said sophomore guard Kodi Justice. “(In the first half) we were holding the lane, we were doing all the things we were supposed to.”
Sophomore guard Tra Holder was ASU’s first-half pace setter, attacking the basket and tallying nine of his 15 total points and two assists in the first 20 minutes.
He approached his matchup with sophomore guard Tyler Ulis (12 points, five rebounds) with confidence and absorbed hard contact on several occasions, including a borderline blocking foul call.
The team seemed to go as he went, mirroring his toughness.
“Their pressure is as good as I’ve seen this year,” Hurley said. “You’ve got to convert easy opportunities when you have them and we didn’t do that in the second half.”
The game was at its closest with Holder on the bench (for all of two minutes in the first half). Justice delivered a clutch three-pointer to hush the crowd and bring the Sun Devils within one, trailing 32-31 at the half.
“I thought we competed the way a good team should compete in the first half,” Hurley said. “(The second half) was the poorest half of basketball we’ve had since our opener, and we’ve had a pretty hard schedule so far.”
Hurley said that the offense was at its best manufacturing extra possessions and hanging tough on the glass.
“We were holding the lane, we were doing all the things we were supposed to,” Justice said.
Justice, who had 12 points, three rebounds and three assists Saturday, said Kentucky exploited ASU because the Sun Devils weren’t executing “the little things.”
“It was running back, it was stopping the ball in transition,” Justice said. “We were up plus 8 on the glass in the first half, and in the second half, we were down 8.”
As Hurley noted, while there were breakdowns on defense that helped Kentucky catch fire offensively, the Wildcats shot just 1-for-11 in the first half from behind the arc. However, they made five of 10 three-point attempts in the second.
Meanwhile, ASU made just four of 20 total three-point attempts.
The rebounding advantage the Sun Devils had in the first half (ASU out-rebounded Kentucky 22–14) was flipped in the second, as Kentucky senior forward Alex Poythress (10 points, six rebounds) and junior forward Marcus Lee (14 points, seven rebounds) asserted themselves in the paint.
“We can’t have those mental lapses like we had in the second half,” senior forward Eric Jacobsen said. “We’ve got to be able to sustain that level of play (from the first half) for 40 minutes.”
Having won on the road at Creighton and against Texas A&M at home, Hurley said his team knew they would get Kentucky’s best effort, and his players all benefitted from the experience of playing in front of a hostile crowd at Rupp Arena.
“I think it’s going to help us in the long run,” Justice said. “If we want to be an NCAA tournament team, this is the type of game we need to win.”
The Sun Devils will head to UNLV at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Dec. 16 at 8 p.m. Arizona time.
Reach the sports editor at smodrich@asu.edu or follow @StefanJModrich on Twitter.
Like State Press Sports on Facebook and follow @statepressport on Twitter.
