‘Lethargic’ Arizona State basketball looking for new answers after lost weekend in Oregon

CORVALLIS, Oregon — Last season when the Arizona State men’s basketball team played at Gill Coliseum it trailed by 16 points but rallied in the second half to come away with a narrow victory. Coach Bobby Hurley was hoping his team had that kind of second half in his team again.

It didn’t.

This time the Sun Devils trailed by 15 at the break and could not answer back, falling to the suddenly surging Oregon State Beavers 84-71 in Pac-12 play Saturday night.

It marked the second straight loss as ASU (11-9, 5-4) dropped the first half of the road trip at Oregon. Meanwhile, Oregon State (10-10, 3-6) won its second straight contest after upsetting No. 9 Arizona on Thursday on a 3-pointer at the buzzer by Jordan Pope.

Oregon State shot 57% (26-for-46) on the night while ASU managed just 35% (23-for-66). ASU got 19 from Jose Perez, 14 from Frankie Collins and a season-high 13 from Shawn Phillips. The Beavers got 19 points and six assists from Pope, the hero in the win over Arizona earlier this week,

The contest was not even as close as the final score indicates. Oregon State’s biggest lead was 22 points at 71-49 with 6:15 left in the game.

What went right

Collins the thief: Collins added six steals to his team-leading total. He now has 64 on the season. He came into the night third in the country in that category and is in striking distance of the school’s single season leader Lafayette Lever who had 76 in 1982. Starting the night, Collins’ 58 steals were 19 more than any other player in the Pac-12. This was his fourth game of six or more steals.

Made free throws: ASU came in averaging 64% on the season which put them 336th out of 351 Division I schools but made 22 of 25 attempts (88%). Part of that was having the right players at the line. Perez was 9-for-9 while Adam Miller was 5-of-6. They have been the best in that regard this season.

Perez continues solid play: Perez has been the bright spot in the team’s recent struggles. He finished with 19 points, giving him 82 in his last four games. He had 20 in each of the last two games. His season best of 26 came against Utah. He also had five rebounds.

What went wrong

Miller continues to struggle: It’s never on just one player but it’s been a tough stretch for Miller, who provided an offensive boost as soon as he became eligible right after Christmas. He had 20 points in his first game, an indication of what all hoped he would bring. But Miller was just 4-for-17 in the two games before Saturday’s game and then that one didn’t go well either. He was 0-for-7 which included an 0-for-6 in the first half. Among the misses were a dunk after he had stolen the ball away from a Beaver and a point blank shot right under the basket late in the half. He had five points, all of those coming from the free-throw line.

First half scoring drought: In Thursday’s game it was a poor first half that did in the Sun Devils. This time it was the first half so its 40 straight minutes of bad basketball. The first half featured nine minutes in which they managed only one field goal. They went from leading 5-2 to trailing 23-8 and it only got worse from there.

Three-point shooting problems: ASU is not great in this department to begin with as they entered averaging 31.3% and it struggled even more than usual, going 3-for-26, including a 1-for-10 in the first half. Jamiya Neal made one for ASU’s first basket of the game but then missed 19 3-pointers in a row. Collins and Neal each knocked one down late in garbage time. Collins was 1-for-7 and Alonzo Gaffney 0-for-5.

Lack of rebounding: Another area in which the Sun Devils are among the worst teams in the country at -7 rebounding margin which places them 348th, the only schools worse being Coppin State and Pacific. ASU lost the battle on the boards in this one 47-26. They don’t have to win the rebounding battle they have to at least keep it close. Oregon State had a whopping 38 defensive rebounds. Michael Rataj led Oregon State with 10.

They said it

“We kind of went back to our old ways, not playing defense, not playing hard, picking and choosing when we want to play. We can’t do that if we want to win games in the conference. We’re not playing hard enough. Teams shooting 60-70% on us whenever they want. That can’t happen. If a team is shooting 60% that means we’re not playing defense. We got to play hard and we got to play hard for 40 minutes. We can’t decide to play hard for 10 minutes or 20 minutes.”

— ASU point guard Frankie Collins

“I thought we were kind of lethargic, flat early in the game and got behind by a significant margin. You can’t perform like that on the road. And this was a team (Oregon State) that was coming off a dramatic win (over Arizona) and feeling good about itself. So the last thing we needed to do was let their confidence grow even more. I knew it was going to be a hard game. I was prepared for anything to happen. Not to see us have the same fire, the same passion that I’m accustomed to seeing was disappointing.” — ASU coach Bobby Hurley

Up next

The Sun Devils return home to host Stanford (10-9, 5-4) and California (8-12, 4-5). The Cardinal come in for a 7 p.m. game on Thursday, that game to air on ESPN 2. Cal then stops in for a 1 p.m. game on Saturday, with that one televised on the Pac-12 Network.

ASU swept both those schools on the road to open conference play with those two games decided by a combined five points.