Arizona State men’s basketball held its ground against No. 1 Arizona on Wednesday but ran out of steam at No. 7 Houston in a stretch that coach Bobby Hurley equated to playing in the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
The Sun Devils (10-8, 1-4 in Big 12) got down by as many as 33 points Sunday, cut the deficit to 13 but eventually succumbed in a 103-73 loss, for their sixth in seven games.
“It was a lot to ask this week,” Hurley told reporters. “I’m gonna take part of the blame because that’s my job to get the guys ready to play. I didn’t practice them as hard to simulate, or try to, just how hard Houston plays. We tried to communicate that to the team.
“Both ends of the floor we were dreadful, and that’s on me to make sure we’re more prepared and ready to play.”
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Hurley said the performance — in which ASU had 12 turnovers in the first half — was eerily similar to their output against No. 9 BYU on Jan. 7, a 104-76 road loss.
And with that, the coach with a fiery history was assessed a technical foul after berating an official in the opening half.
Team-leading scorer Moe Odum (16.3 points per game) was limited to less than 40% shooting for the second straight game with a 2-for-10 night against the Cougars. His lone two buckets were 3-pointers (2 for 7).
Though ASU only shot 41% (22 for 54), Hurley said the culprit was their lack of “resistance” on the defensive end, the Sun Devils allowing 44 points in the paint and 12 made 3s on just 25 Houston attempts. After seeing Arizona, BYU and now Houston, Hurley dubbed the latter the most intense of the stout group, but that is no excuse for what ASU put on tape.
“There’s gotta be more resistance, there’s gotta be more fight,” Hurley said. “There’s gotta be more toughness, there’s gotta be just better effort on that end of the floor. … We’re not rotating over, we’re not helping each other, our transition defense was bad.
“We’re not gonna get any better and win games if we keep letting teams score the way they’ve been scoring on us.”
ASU is ranked 325th out of 361 Division 1 programs for opponents points per game (80.7) and 282nd in rebound margin.
Sophomore guard Noah Meeusen, who scored 10 points (3 for 4 shooting) in his second start of the season, said the goal was to build on a seven-point, down-to-the-wire loss to their rival Wildcats. However, ASU fell victim to something that is becoming more of pattern: sluggish starts.
Houston led 24-2 with 14:21 left in the first half.
“It was embarrassing, and that just set the tone for the whole game,” Meeusen said. “We gotta come out better. I feel like that’s something typical for us, like coming out soft. We just gotta stop that.”
Meeusen is pacing the Sun Devils with 1.6 steals in his 25.2 minutes per game.
ASU returns home for a pair of games against West Virginia (12-6, 3-2) on Wednesday and Cincinnati (10-8, 2-3) on Saturday. The former has a win over Kansas on its résumé while the latter took down No. 2 Iowa State at home over the weekend.
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