Arizona State starters logging a lot of minutes ahead of showdown with No. 3 Iowa State

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Senior point guard Alston Mason has carried a heavy workload for the Arizona State men’s basketball team. He’s averaging 35.4 minutes per game. That’s second in the Big 12 to only Javon Small of West Virginia.

Mason isn’t the only one. True freshman forward Jayden Quaintance and senior guard Adam Miller are also at more than 30 minutes per game.

The Sun Devils (11-7, 2-5) return home from a two-game road trip to host No. 3 Iowa State (16-2, 6-1) at noon Saturday in a Big 12 contest to air on ESPN+. Help is on the way as freshman guard Joson Sanon is expected to return from a sprained ankle that sidelined him in five of the past six games.

For most of the season, coach Bobby Hurley has gone with a rotation of eight players — but that was with Sanon, who suffered the injury on Dec. 31 at Brigham Young. Junior guard Austin Nunez, who would have been the backup point guard to Mason, is out for the season with a foot injury. USC transfer Brandon Gardner has not played at all, which makes three scholarship players down for the count.

Complicating matters has been a difficult travel schedule with some Big 12 venues not exactly traveler-friendly. Hurley said that has been as big a factor regarding the number of players he has had available.

“Overall it’s an adjustment,” Hurley said. “This isn’t the Pac-12 anymore. Again, when you land on Wednesday at 4 in the morning and guys are getting home at 5, then you’re like a zombie the whole day that next day. Even yesterday (Thursday) in practice, I didn’t think we had a lot of pop, a lot of juice.

“Today (Friday) we looked far better. It’s an adjustment to these high-level games, great crowds, tough environments. So mixed in with some tricky travel that we have to get accustomed to.”

ASU starters are averaging 154.1 minutes per game, by far the most of any of the conference’s 16 schools. Central Florida is the only other school with three players averaging 30 minutes per game, but its starting quintet is at 144.9 minutes per game. Six Big…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/arizona-state-starters-logging-lot-120310312.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2025-01-25 12:03:00

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