Arizona State basketball hangs on to edge Colorado, remains unbeaten in Pac-12 play
Junior guard Jamiya Neal made his way to the interview room at Desert Financial Arena, moments after the Sun Devils squeaked by Colorado 76-73 Saturday night. He's a movie buff and was asked if this Sun Devils team reminded him of a particular movie.
He thought a minute, then referred to the remake of "The Longest Yard" with Adam Sandler.
"Because I don't know what the refs were doing today," he laughed, which also drew chuckles from the gathered reporters. "We were the Adam Sandler team, playing against the police officers today."
Foul trouble was indeed one thing the Sun Devils had to overcome. The other was a pesky Colorado team smarting from a beat down it took a few days earlier at Arizona. Colorado (11-4, 2-2) was bolstered by the return of its star Tristan da Silva, who had missed the previous three games with an ankle injury.
Three weeks ago it looked like the Sun Devils would be hard-pressed just to finish .500 after some embarrassing and lop-sided non-conference losses. But with Saturday's win over the Buffs the Sun Devils (10-5) improved to 4-0 in conference play for the fourth time, the first since 2007-08.
They sit atop the Pac-12 along with Oregon, which also improved to 4-0 in conference play with a win over Washington State Saturday.
For the Sun Devils, it might be a matter of getting all the pieces back on the floor.
Shawn Phillips, a 7-foot center, got back in the mix after missing six games with a foot injury. And Adam Miller is more in sync with his teammates, after sitting out the first nine games when his waiver was denied.
"I think it was a matter of us getting more acclimated with each other," Neal said. "It's hard. Even Jose (Perez) is new. You add Adam (Miller) obviously. The lineups keep changing and the rotation keeps changing. Shawn (Phillips) was injured and now he's coming back. We have everybody and we have gotten to practice with everybody, try different groups and stuff so that's what has been helping us get comfortable with each other. So now we look more like a basketball team out there because we have everybody."
The 4-0 start in Pac-12 play started with a sweep of Cal and Stanford on the road with the Sun Devils the only team in the conference to sweep a road trip on the first weekend of Pac-12 play. Those games were decided by a combined five points.
Saturday's win, which came two days after defeating Utah, followed the pattern of those Bay Area wins and now gives ASU 40 wins in games decided by two possessions or less dating back to the 2019-2020 season. That leads the entire nation.
The most impressive win though was the 82-70 win over the Utes on Thursday, ASU's first Quad 1 win of the season.
"We're no stranger to these type of games," ASU coach Bobby Hurley said. "We're in close games. Guys came through with stops. I thought it was a great performance, both ends of the floor. We have something good happening right now. We just got to bottle it and just try and strive to play the kind of basketball we've been playing the last 10 days or so."
As has been the case, the Sun Devils made some stellar defensive plays down the stretch Saturday. They led 63-53 with 9:17 to go but 6-9 Alonzo Gaffney went to the bench with his fourth foul. Five minutes earlier Phillips was whistled for his fourth.
Bryant Selebangue turned in some quality minutes in place of the other bigs. With ASU up 70-68 he blocked an offering by da Silva and then grabbed the rebound.
Then with ASU up 72-70 and 32 seconds to go, Gaffney had a block on K.J. Simpson with 32 seconds to go. It was a precarious last minute of play but the Sun Devils hung on from there, making some clutch free throws to help seal it.
Neal finished with 19 points and seven rebounds while Miller added 18. Point guard Frankie Collins was a stellar catalyst with 12 points, four assists and three steals. ASU had 11 steals and scored 27 points off turnovers.
"Our defense helped our offense again," Hurley said. "We got a lot of good points in transition."
"You got to be happy with where you are. It shows the guys if we play the right way, trust each other, compete like heck on defense like we've been the last few games we have a chance to be pretty good and these last two teams that came in here, really good records, playing well and so we're happy with where we are today."
Neal said the challenge will be to maintain the momentum.
"We just had to take a deep breath," Neal said. "Since I've been here we've never been a team that starts off slow. We've had a lot of close games, a lot of comebacks. I think before we were overreacting a little bit. Just seeing what we did to help us win, and then keep doing that and then try and do it the next game."
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona State men down Colorado, now 4-0 in Pac-12
