It may have been a blowout, but it never felt like one.
Sunday evening's 66-41 win over Cal Poly was a strange game that featured lots of missed threes and even more turnovers.
As tough as it was to watch, the game was an interesting checkpoint for ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne’s team.
“I thought that was a good team win. In case anybody didn’t know we worked on defense this week,” Turner Thorne said with a smile. “It was kind of a perfect thing that we didn’t shoot well. If we shot well, we would not have gotten as much out of that game.”
It got ugly early and often.
ASU struggled to score, hitting just three of 14 shot attempts from beyond the arc in the first half. Despite Ja’Tavia Tapley’s 12 points, the Sun Devils only held an 11-point lead over the Mustangs at the break.
Cal Poly wasn’t doing much scoring either. The Sun Devils held the visitors to just one made field goal in the second quarter.
“We really came into this game focusing on our defense,” ASU senior point guard Reili Richardson said.
A 14-2 run to start the third quarter gave ASU the 23-point lead and, eventually, the 25-point win.
“We still have some things to work on, but we made sure we come ready to get open,” Tapley said. “We trust each other.”
A promising final result, the Sun Devils 25-point win still unearthed a troubling issue with this young team.
Cal Poly proved to be a hard-working and formidable opponent, but to score just 66 points against a 1-4 non-Power 5 conference team is troubling. And despite Tapley’s 23 points, no other Sun Devil reached double digits.
Finishing the game shooting just 35.9% from the floor, ASU have yet to find a secondary scorer next to Tapley.
A few potential candidates, Jamie Ruden and Jamie Loera) for Turner Thorne’s team are hurt, but after scoring 14 points against Minnesota last weekend, Taya Hanson went just 2-10 from three-point range against the Mustangs.
Other possible options for the roll struggled as well. Senior guard Robbi Ryan only scored one point, freshman forward Eboni Walker had just three shot attempts and Richardson shot one of six from beyond the arc.
Despite Tapley’s emergence as a primary scorer, ASU has had trouble putting the biscuit in the basket.
“We’re young and it’s just going to take a long time for this team to iron out the kinks,” Turner Thorne said.
Next week, ASU heads to Florida to play Maine in the opening round of the Florida Gulf Coast Showcase. Tip-off from Estero, Florida will be at 3 p.m. MST.
Reach the reporter at kbriley@asu.edu and on Twitter @KokiRiley.
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