Arizona State Basketball: 3 takeaways from a tough loss to Creighton

ASU Needs to Understand Their Limitations

Arizona State had the chance to pull away from Creighton in the first half when Creighton wasn’t shooting well, but they chose to try to score in the least effective way possible. Instead of attacking the basket, where they were finding success and Creighton had no answer for Romello White, they chose to get into a 3-point shooting competition with Creighton.

I understand they hit a couple of them early, but it should have become clear early on that the path of least resistance was to get the ball to the basket. White had a double-double before the end of the first half and Creighton couldn’t stop Arizona State’s guards when they drove to the basket, especially Alonzo Verge.

This was the first game in over a week where ASU’s opponent was better defensively against the 3 than against the 2. That should have played right into ASU’s strengths, but they chose to ignore that and instead try to lean on a hot start from 3 that saw them make 7 of their first 17 attempts, with a few of those being ill-advised. Unfortunately, they missed their last 9 and the fact that they continued to try to beat Creighton from outside instead of inside was costly in a close game.

The offense even seemed geared toward attacking from the outside. ASU’s offense consisted in large part of just passing the ball around the arc until they took a difficult shot or they threw up something contested before they even made a pass. There were very few ball screens and no entry passes to White to try and change ASU’s strategy.

The obvious path to victory was for the Sun Devils to attack the basket on offense and take away the 3 from Creighton on defense. They did half of that really well. Unfortunately, neglecting the other half cost them this game.