TEMPE
The beauty and the curse of college basketball is that when you hit the road, the game changes. Those two- and three-star recruits at Arizona State with unfamiliar names become part-Braveheart, part-Gladiator.
After beating Arizona 81-78 on Saturday, Sun Devil forward Savon Goodman said, “This is a lifetime experience; I’ll never forget it.”
It was one game in early February for a team that was 11-11. A lifetime experience?
“This win definitely validates our season,” said Goodman.
When ASU assistant coach Barret Peery departed the Sun Devils locker room 30 minutes after the floor was cleared, he was accompanied by his wife, Tracy, and their four young kids.
All wore gold “Beat the Cats” T-shirts.
Can you imagine the children of an Arizona coach, or anyone in Tucson, wearing a “Beat the Devils” basketball T-shirt?
All that was left was a faint meow.
Playing in Tempe is always full of brambles and shades of darkness, and it’s getting worse. Arizona has lost five times at Wells Fargo Arena dating to 2008, so whatever magic Lute Olson spun, once winning in Tempe 18 times in 21 seasons, is a faded memory.
Arizona wasn’t ready for the Sun Devils, wasn’t ready for 40 minutes of skin-tight pressure. It wasn’t ready for the professor, Herb Sendek, who had scouted and evaluated the Wildcats so well that the UA fell into his trap.
“We shrunk the floor on them,” said ASU point guard Tra Holder. “We knew they only averaged four three-pointers game, so we made them shoot jump shots.”
Stanley Johnson missed 11 jumpers. Brandon Ashley missed seven. That was the price Sendek hoped the Wildcats would pay, and he was right. Give Sendek a week to prepare for any opponent, and he’s as good with X’s and O’s as anyone in the business.
It wasn’t much different than the 1995 NCAA tournament game when Sendek’s Miami of Ohio RedHawks stunned Arizona 71-62 in Dayton, Ohio.
“Sometimes ... you deep down feel like you didn’t deserve to win and really that’s how I felt,” Miller said.
It was as if the Wildcats showed up with a “do we really have to be here?” demeanor. Ashley was knocked roughly to the ground early in the game and appeared to be skittish the final 30 minutes. Whatever ASU was dishing out, Arizona succumbed to it.
Somehow, even though ASU’s only inside (ahem) presence — 6-foot-10-inch Eric Jacobsen — spent nine second-half minutes on the bench in foul trouble, Arizona never did establish itself inside.
Miller seemed a bit thunderstruck during the game. Was this really happening? Was his team truly free-lancing and ignoring his instructions? Did they yield to Sendek’s trap? Why were they a step slow on defense?
ASU “did a great job of moving the basketball,” Miller said. “They shared it and moved it; they made the extra pass and worked the paint relentlessly.
“We had no rim protection. No physicality.”
Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
Arizona’s last best chance to overturn a day of mistakes came with 2 minutes 18 seconds remaining. It forced the Sun Devils to take a timeout with five seconds on the shot clock. It was 71-66. Get the ball back and score, and it would be anyone’s game.
But when ASU inbounded the ball, Gabe York slapped at Bo Barnes and fouled him. The lead grew.
“We didn’t take anything away from them,” Miller said.
It was the combo platter of goof-ups. Tiger Woods couldn’t get his “glutes” activated last week. Arizona couldn’t get its head activated Saturday.
Professor Sendek’s team passed and cut and screened and moved with a purpose. Goodman, who didn’t make a field goal in Tucson a month ago, was 7 for 7 early in the game. Holder, who missed the only shot he took at McKale, scored 15 points this time.
Because they were more aggressive than Arizona, the Sun Devils won the game at the foul line, making 22 free throws to Arizona’s eight.
“We stuck with our game plan,” said Goodman. “We definitely had a mind-set to play inside-out. It was just open. It was working.”
The Wildcats went from a hot streak to a state where they need to be defrosted.
So what happens next? There’s little doubt Arizona swallowed a seed at Wells Fargo Arena, irretrievably losing a chance to be on the No.1 line during Selection Sunday. More stressful is that UNLV, Oregon State and the Sun Devils have exposed Arizona’s weakness — soft defense and demeanor on the road.
Few could have guessed that when the Sun Devils took a 27-25 lead with six minutes remaining in the first half that Arizona would never truly recover. The Wildcats didn’t lead again.
At the next timeout, the overhead video board flashed a “noise meter” in which it ranked the decibel level from “crickets” to “earplugs.”
For the final 26 minutes, ASU did all the chirping.
