Arizona State men’s basketball team looks to boost postseason resume against rival Arizona

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The Arizona State men’s basketball team has gotten off to a tough start in the Big 12. It’s the toughest conference in the country and the Sun Devils are competing in it for the first time.

Most projections have ASU (12-8, 3-6) on the outside of the March Madness field. The Big 12 play affords the Sun Devils several opportunities to notch quality wins and work their way back into the picture.

One of those comes at 11 a.m. Saturday as the rival Arizona Wildcats (14-6, 8-1) visit Desert Financial Arena in a game that will air on CBS.

“We want to try and climb out of a hole we dug for ourselves,” ASU coach Bobby Hurley said after the team’s win over Colorado earlier this week. “We’ve dealt with a lot of stuff with injuries and we’re still dealing with it.”

“We had the No. 3 strength of schedule in KenPom so we’ve been in a lot of tough places, played a lot of hard games on the road already and in the Big 12 and in the nonconference, neutral sites. These guys are learning how to fight together and we gotta clean some things up. We have to close games better.”

The biggest question surrounding ASU will be the availability of personnel. Hurley has relied on an eight-man rotation but he was down to six players in Tuesday’s 70-68 win at Colorado because freshman big Jayden Quaintance (10.3 ppg, 8.5 rpg) was out with an ankle injury sustained in practice while leading scorer B.J. Freeman (12.5 ppg, 4.1 rpg) exited with a deep thigh bruise early in the first half and didn’t return.

In their absence, others stepped up, most notably senior guard Adam Miller and junior center Shawn Phillips. Miller scored 18 points, including a 4-for-5 effort from long range, with Phillips adding 13 points, nine rebounds, and two blocked shots. Miller (10.1 ppg) and fellow guard Alston Mason (11.6 ppg) each played 39 minutes in that game.

Hurley said after the game that Freeman took a knee to the thigh, “one of those basketball plays that happens all the time” and that he already was walking better after the…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/arizona-state-mens-basketball-team-231425727.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2025-01-31 23:14:00

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