Arizona State Basketball: 2019-20 keys in home matchup against Arizona

Knock Down Open Looks

I don’t know if there’s a team in college basketball whose offense is tougher to get a read on than Arizona State. They’ve gone from scoring 47 points against U of A, to scoring 82 and 69 on their road trip to Oregon. Then they finally got to play a Pac-12 home game and shot 34.3% from the field against Buffalo, with Romelo White and Remy Martin carrying the load while their supporting cast disappeared. Then they scored 83 on 51.7% shooting in their dominant win over Utah.

In this game, they need to finally find some consistency and knock down their open looks. The U of A defense doesn’t give up a ton of easy chances anywhere on the court. The key to beating them

for any team is to score whenever they give you those chances. Oregon State made their chances count against U of A and that’s how they managed to pull off the upset.

Obviously, I’m not saying that ASU has to hit shots at the ridiculous rate OSU did in the second half (I believe they hit around 70% of their shots in the second half of that game), but they need to at least make Arizona pay whenever they do give up open looks. Otherwise, Arizona is just going to clog the lane and force Arizona state to shoot from outside.

If the Sun Devils (particularly Alonzo Verge and Rob Edwards) can’t make U of A pay when they’re left open then it’s going to make it a lot easier to focus on taking White and Martin out of the equation and completely dominate inside. Arizona State can’t let that happen if they want to win this game.