Arizona State visiting No. 6 Gonzaga for third game of busy six-day span
After putting the college basketball world on notice with a resounding 101-68 victory over eighth-ranked Baylor, Gonzaga players were rewarded with a five-day layoff – time they likely used to recover, refine their skills and review film before welcoming another Big 12 opponent to Spokane.
The past five days have looked much different – and significantly more hectic – for Arizona State leading up to Sunday’s visit to McCarthey Athletic Center (2 p.m., ESPN).
A jam-packed schedule for the Sun Devils began with Tuesday’s season opener against Idaho State. ASU squeaked out a 55-48 home win against an ISU team picked to finish eighth in the Big Sky Conference before shifting its attention to a weekend matchup against a quality opponent from the West Coast Conference.
Well, the first of two weekend matchups against quality opponents from the WCC.
The prelude to Sunday’s game in Spokane was a neutral-site matchup against Santa Clara on Friday in Las Vegas. ASU led by one possession inside the final minute, but prevailed 81-74 thanks in large part to the 30 bench points supplied by BJ Freeman and Amier Ali.
The Sun Devils stayed the night in Vegas and flew directly to Spokane on Saturday for their third game in sixth days – and easily the most difficult, by any number of metrics.
“We want to get our players accustomed for these road trips,” Hurley said at Big 12 Media Day. “We’re playing four nonconference home games in our nonconference schedule. I’m not sure any other power conference team would play that amount of home games. So we should be battle tested on neutral sites and on road games through, certainly you can look at the Duke (exhibition) this weekend, then you can move right to game No. 3 at Gonzaga.
“So we’re putting ourselves in some challenging situations against some really good teams on the road and, hopefully, that’ll pay dividends as we hit our conference schedule.”
ASU, entering its first year in the Big 12, was picked by coaches to finish 12th in the 16-team conference. That’s eight spots lower than Baylor, which fell into a double-digit hole within the first 11 minutes of Monday’s opener, and trailed Gonzaga by at least 20 points for the final 10 minutes at the Arena.
The Sun Devils corrected some of their offensive issues on Friday after scoring just 47 points in a preseason exhibition at Duke – the school where ASU’s coach became a two-time national champion and consensus All-American – and shooting just 20 of 55 (36%) from the field against Idaho State.
Gonzaga seemingly had no such issues putting the ball in the basket against Baylor, pounding the Bears inside for 48 paint points and constantly making them pay on the perimeter. The Bulldogs were 13 of 31 from the 3-point line, with Khalif Battle (4 of 8), Dusty Stromer (3 of 5) and Nolan Hickman (3 of 6) combined to make 10 3s – seven more than Baylor did as a team.
“We put 100 up today on a great team and kind of a scary team,” Gonzaga’s Mark Few said. “They’re really, really, really athletic and do a lot of different things on the defensive end, kind of mix it up. I thought it was a game where they switching every screen, which kind of takes a little rhythm out of you.
“Our guys made the right read, made the right play and turned good (shots) to get great ones. We were getting really good one more, two more swings to open 3s, especially in those corners.”
The Sun Devils have multiple scoring options – some younger, others on the more experienced side – that should have Gonzaga’s attention on Sunday afternoon.
Freeman, a former UW Milwaukee player, is ASU’s scoring leader through two games despite coming off the bench in both. Freeman scored a team-high 17 points on Friday against Santa Clara, but it came on 4-of-14 shooting from the field.
The highest-ranked recruiting class in ASU history is led by two players who weren’t originally committed to the Sun Devils.
Center Jayden Quaintance, a top-10 recruit in the class of 2024 who signed with Kentucky before coach John Calipari left for Arkansas, was leading all NCAA Division I players in blocked shots (10) as of Saturday, and hauled down 13 rebounds in Friday’s victory.
Shooting guard Joson Sanon, the 24th-rated player in the ’24 class. per 247Sports.com, was committed to former Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd and Arizona but decommitted from the Tucson school the same day standout guard Caleb Love announced he was returning to Tucson for his final season.
Sanon scored 11 points in each of ASU’s first two games.