Arizona State Basketball: 3 takeaways from Sun Devils loss to Saint Mary’s
By John Vaccaro
The Defense Won’t Always Be Enough
If there is one thing that the Wednesday night’s game against Saint Mary’s doesn’t change, it’s my confidence in Arizona State’s defense. Sometimes teams just get unbelievably hot no matter how well you play on defense. Just ask any of Auburn’s opponents from the end of last season. However, just because I still have faith in ASU’s defense doesn’t mean I think it is enough for them to win unless they improve their offense.
The fact of the matter is even if Saint Mary’s hadn’t had the shooting night of a lifetime, ASU still score enough to win this game. They only managed to score 56 points, which is a number they’ve only held 3 teams under this season. One of those teams was Central Connecticut State, who hasn’t won a game yet this season, and the other was Virginia, who beat them with 48 points.
The one thing worse than that point total is how they got there. ASU shot an abysmal 3/22 from the 3-point line and 35.9%from the field. They were also -5 in the turnover margin and had an awful .27 assist-to-turnover ratio.
This performance continued a trend of poor shooting for ASU, particularly from behind the arc. What makes it even worse is the fact that Saint Mary’s had a 3-pt defense that was essentially non-existent before this game.
ASU’s defense is good, but at some point, they need to fix their offensive woes if they are going to be able to compete against the nation’s best teams or even win enough games to get themselves into the NCAA tournament field. I have one suggestion for a way to fix those problem’s that I’ll get to later in the slideshow.