Before heading up to the Pacific Northwest, ASU was settled top of the Pac-12 standings, and their goals of contending for the first-place spot didn’t appear out of reach. But now, after falling to the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers, both by double digits, they ended up at sixth in the conference.
There is a common theme in conference losses for the Sun Devils this season — for every good half, there's a bad half to counteract it. Against Washington, UCLA and Oregon, the Sun Devils was leading going into halftime, and then was outscored by at least 15 points in the second half.
The OSU game was the opposite; ASU started out weak, and Oregon State came out hot while riding the momentum from a buzzer-beater upset win against No. 9 Arizona. ASU lost the first half by 15 and won the second half by two.
Head coach Bobby Hurley described this phenomenon after losing 80-61 against Oregon.
“It’s like almost watching two different teams really, first half, second half,” Hurley said. “(ASU) didn’t come out right out of the shoot with our same intensity on defense. (We) weren’t able to generate any stops.”
The intensity that Hurley is referring to held the Ducks to 34% from the field in the first 20 minutes; then, as Hurley said, the defense started to crack, and the Ducks caught fire, shooting the ball almost twice as well at 69.23% in the second half.
Bryant Selebangue, junior forward, said the key to winning this game against Oregon was sticking to their principles.
“Defense, defense, defense. If we’re able to just do that every game, man, it’s night and day what we can do," Selebangue said, referring to forcing turnovers against USC.
ASU forced 22 turnovers against USC and won. In their loss in Eugene, they forced just nine turnovers, and in their loss in Corvallis they forced 15.
Another troubling trend in ASU's play is their lackluster rebounding. They have been outrebounded in every single conference game this season.
Hurley said the team needs to make up for their size with their quickness and speed. Using that speed, they are averaging 16.6 fast break points while only 11.5 in their losses in conference play.
After falling to the Beavers 84-71, Hurley put some of the blame on the coaching staff.
“The coaches didn’t do a good job of getting us ready to play,” Hurley said. “I thought we were kind of lethargic, a little flat, early in the game.”
ASU also struggled shooting from the three-point range, going 3-26 from beyond the arc.
Even though there were two losses, there were still some things that ASU did well on the road trip. Junior guard Frankie Collins collected eight steals through both games. Collins currently sits second in the country in steals per game, averaging 3.05 steals. He said he does his homework in order to continue his defensive domination.
“Just pride … watching film and understanding team’s schemes, player's rhythms, dribbles, and things like that," Collins said.
Jose Perez, graduate student guard, also dropped 19 against OSU, and 20 against Oregon. Perez has scored double digit points in the last five games.
On Thursday, ASU faces their next challenge against a Stanford team that they have already beaten once, as the Sun Devils look to get back on track in front of their home crowd at Desert Financial Arena.
Edited by Alfred Smith III, Sadie Buggle and Shane Brennan
Reach the reporter at hjsmardo@gmail.com and follow @HenryJSmardo on X.
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