As a Penn/Arizona alum, 1 of the all-time favorite games I attended took place on December 29, 1996. Only a few months after graduating from college in Philly, I had moved back to Phoenix and noticed that my Quakers were heading to Tucson to face the nationally-ranked Wildcats. I scored a press pass, drove 2 hours south to the McKale Center, wore some red and blue (covering my bases with both schools’ colors!), and got to watch Lute Olson beat up on Fran Dunphy as the Cats won by a score of 93-51 in the Fiesta Bowl Classic. I was a little disappointed in the butt-whipping…until Arizona won the NCAA title a few months later and I realized just how good that team actually was. Fast-forward 22 years to the day: I was heading back to Phoenix for some much-needed vacation and noticed that my Quakers’ archrivals (Princeton) were heading to Tempe to face my Wildcats’ archrivals (ASU) on December 29, 2018. I considered the symmetry, scored a press pass, and headed to the Wells Fargo Arena to cheer for…the refs?!
We are not in Georgetown anymore, Dorothy: a pregame meal of cookies/water (seriously!?), no seat directly behind the basket (although cannot complain about sitting 15 rows behind the Princeton bench), and since the game is being televised on the Pac-12 Network that guy next to me in the bathroom is indeed…Bill Walton!! As usual, the worst seat in the house is directly behind the 6’11” guy who likes to stand up:
Just watching Princeton warm up I could tell that this might not be a slam dunk for the Sun Devils even though they were only 1 week removed from upsetting #1-ranked Kansas. My 1st clue was the non-sell-out during winter break:
At least the band was out in full force:
Not sure if the gates of hell are alive and well in Tempe but at least the students majoring in 14th century Italian poetry bring their A game:
Oh I get it: Devils, Sparky, hell. I see what you did there:
It certainly did not look like hell along the baseline:
Tigers’ PG Jose Morales somehow made an underhanded scoop shot from half-court but what really caught my eye was the team’s pregame drills: instead of boring old layup lines and jump shots, Coach Mitch Henderson had his team go through zone defense drills with 4 players on the perimeter who just shifted back and forth along the 3-PT line for 15 seconds at a time.
Since Coach Bobby Hurley was coming off of the aforementioned huge win, I decided to research how he did as a player at Duke in the games directly after beating a #1 team. It was a pretty small sample size (in large part due to the fact that he was part of a top-ranked team for much of his college career) but it turns out that he was 2-for-2:
In the 1991 Final 4 he beat #1 UNLV and followed that up by beating Kansas in the title game.
In December of 1992 he beat #1 Michigan and followed that up by beating Northeastern.
And away we go:
There was no sign of Princeton’s 3rd-leading scorer Myles Stephens (who was out due to a sore knee), so perhaps the Tigers would not be as ferocious as necessary. Fortunately, the desert air seemed to agree with Jerome Desrosiers as he made a trio of threes (despite only making 6 shots from behind the arc all season!) en route to 12 PTS in the 1st half (which tied his season-high for an entire game).
ASU’s 3 leading scorers vs. the Jayhawks were Luguentz Dort/Zylan Cheatham/Rob Edwards. The trio came out ice-cold in the 1st half, combining for 3 PTS/1-12 FG/6 fouls, and the entire team could not buy a bucket from long distance (as the Devils were 0-7 from behind the 3-PT line). Romello White single-handedly kept his team in the game with a series of layups/put-backs/dunks: 13 PTS/10 REB/2 BLK/0 TO in the 1st half!
The final minute of the half illustrated how much coaching actually goes into a game, as both coaches called a use-it-or-lose-it timeout to set up an offensive play. Coach Hurley spends an awful lot of time yelling at the refs during a game but was still composed enough to draw up 1 last play. Coach Henderson huddled up in response to draw up a defensive plan of action:
He decided to have his team switch from its normal man-to-man defense into a zone defense on ASU’s final possession of the half…and forced the Devils into a shot-clock violation while maintaining a 37-30 lead over the home team at the break.
Despite a 3 from Devin Cannady to give the Tigers a 40-30 lead in the 2nd half, Princeton picked up its 5th team foul less than 7 minutes after halftime so you just knew that ASU would have a chance to get back into the game. The Sun Devils finally got their offense going thanks to their backcourt. Remy Martin has a habit of taking long jumpers, which is known as 1 of the least efficient shots in the sport, but he makes so many of them (a team-high 19 PTS) that there is a reason he is allowed to take them. Rob Edwards ended his team’s 0-10 3-PT drought by draining back-to-back 3s midway through the 2nd half to give his team a 51-49 lead and get the crowd back into it. However, White picked up his on 4th foul with 9:28 left before heading to the bench, which swung the momentum back to Princeton, and it became a total team effort. Cannady continued making threes (finishing with a game-high 21 PTS) but much of the credit goes to Sebastian Much, who had only scored 23 PTS all season. He turned into Sebastian Clutch in the final minutes: he flung in a 3 to beat the shot-clock and close the deficit to 61-60, then made a drive/layup to tie it at 62, another 3 to give his team a 65-64 lead, then a sweet pass to Richmond Arriguzoh who got fouled with 25 seconds left while trailing by 1 PT. The big man stepped up to the line and tried to stay focused while confronted with the curtain of distraction. Having never seen it in person before, I was impressed with all of the different costume changes…although Princeton seemed unimpressed based on its 9-12 performance at the FT line in the 2nd half:
Entering the game at 73.9 FT% this year, Arriguzoh calmly converted 2 FTs to give his team a 67-66 lead and finish the day 9-10 from the line. ASU huddled up for the final time and tried to draw up a winning play:
They had 3 chances in the final 10 seconds: Edwards missed a pair of threes and Dort missed a jumper as the home team lost by 1 PT.
In the postgame press conference I asked Coach Hurley if his team’s 2-15 shooting from 3-PT range was due to a cold shooting night or Princeton’s defense or something else. He said there were “open threes that we did not cash in on”, and that he was even more concerned about all the layups/put-backs that did not wall, as those had a greater impact on the outcome of the game:
That puts a wrap on 2018, happy New Year to all…and always keep your enemies close:
