When Herb Sendek speaks, Eric Jacobsen listens.
That’s nothing too out of the ordinary, a player listening to his coach.
But Jacobsen has always listened, and patiently waited, in his time at Arizona State. He believes Sendek knows what he’s doing. Particularly with big men.
When Jacobsen accepted Sendek’s scholarship offer, and when he joined the Sun Devils for the first time as a freshman in 2012, ASU had a twin-tower set of big men in the 7-foot-2-inch Jordan Bachynski and 7-footer Ruslan Pateev.
Jacobsen, listed at 6-10, had never seen that many big men ahead of him. He was a three-star recruit at Chandler Hamilton High School whose only other offers came from Pepperdine, San Francisco, UC-Santa Barbara and Weber State. He camped out on the Sun Devils’ bench in the early going.
“Nobody likes to sit,” Jacobsen said, “but I understood coming into it that I wasn’t going to get the starting position or anything like that. That I would have to work for it.”
As a freshman, Jacobsen played 7.3 minutes per game, scoring 55 points in 32 contests. As a sophomore, that jumped up to 10.4 minutes. He had almost as many personal fouls (73) as points scored (77) in 32 games.
But Jacobsen trusted Sendek, and still does. He has done this before, after all.
“Oftentimes, when a guy doesn’t play right away, they decide to transfer,” Sendek said. “That never entered Eric’s thinking. He was a Sun Devil from the beginning and stayed the course.”
It’s part of why Jacobsen came to Arizona State in the first place.
“He’s a really smart coach, and I’ve always respected him and I think he definitely knows what he’s talking about when it comes to anything about basketball,” he said of Sendek. “I’ve never doubted anything he’s told me. I like his approach to the game.”
Sendek’s approach turned the 6-10 Jeff Pendergraph (now known as Jeff Ayres) from an unheralded three-star recruit to an All-Pac-10 selection and an NBA draft pick. It developed 6-10 Eric Boateng from a disappointing Duke recruit to one of the Pac-12’s better rebounders in 2009-10.
And then there’s Sendek’s best success story — the 7-2 Bachynski, an overlooked three-star recruit who barely played his freshman year before developing into the Pac-12’s all-time leading shot-blocker. As a senior, Bachynski led the NCAA in blocks and won Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year honors.
Jacobsen played both with and behind Bachynski the last two years, and he learned a few things.
“I definitely learned how to shot-fake,” Jacobsen said, laughing. “In practice Jordan was blocking me all the time ... he never dunked on me because I would always foul him before I let that happen, but there was a bunch of times where just shot after shot he was blocking me.”
Now, Jacobsen is a full-time starter and possibly ASU’s most consistent defender. He is averaging 9.5 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game, shoots 65.2 percent from the field and has taken 20 charges.
“Eric’s role has really transformed for us,” Sendek said. “He’s gone from a reserve, a guy who played limited minutes as a freshman, played some more last year as a sophomore, and has really broke strides this year.
“He’s really having a breakthrough season for us now, and I think he’s still just scratching the surface of who he can become.”
