By Greg Dillard
After being swept by Cal and Stanford in the opening weekend of Pac-10 play, the ASU men’s basketball team returned to Wells Fargo Arena on Wednesday night to host a talented Tulsa squad.
Behind an explosive first half that saw the Sun Devils (9-7, 1-3 Pac-10) net 45 points, ASU handed the Golden Hurricane (8-8, 1-1 C-USA) a 69-59 loss in its final non conference game of the season.
“The biggest difference tonight is we made shots at least in the first half,” ASU coach Herb Sendek said. “We didn’t do it in the second half and you saw everything tighten up, but we made shots.”
Senior guard Ty Abbott powered the Sun Devil offense with seven three pointers and 25 points. Three of Abbott’s threes came within the first four minutes of the game.
While Abbott clearly led the way for the Sun Devils, it was a team effort from the beginning.
“It was big not only for the win but the way we all played together,” Abbott said. “We haven’t really had a game where guys were clicking. We had guys from all areas with Ruslan [Pateev] and Marcus [Jackson] up top and Carrick [Felix] and I, we were all going and playing in sync.”
Sophomore forward Carrick Felix served as a more than capable complement to Abbott as Felix became a force near the basket.
In 39 minutes of play, Felix netted 21 points and was perfect from the free throw line by making all four of his attempts.
With :54 left in the first period, Felix capped off an impressive half with his second slam dunk to extend the Sun Devils’ lead to 45-25.
The Golden Hurricane’s defense managed to slow a once red hot ASU offense in the second period.
ASU saw its three point shooting drop from 50 % in the first half to 30% in the second. The Sun Devils also shot 58% from the field in the opening half, then shot only 25% in the final half of the contest.
Sophomore guard and former walk on Marcus Jackson got the started due to senior guard Jamelle McMillan’s groin injury.
In 35 minutes on the court, Jackson grabbed four rebounds, three points, and two steals. While the numbers weren’t flashy, Jackson’s consistent, aggressive effort did not go unnoticed by his teammates.
“I can’t say enough about him,” Abbott said. “I’m so proud of him. He came out. He was all over. He was diving on the floor. He was taking charges. He was finding guys open. He was player of the game, definitely.”
ASU saw it’s once huge lead shrink to eight during the final minutes of the game, but prevailed thanks to two free throw points from Pateev.
Despite the abundance of attention directed toward Saturday’s rivalry matchup against Arizona, Sendek was focused on his team’s victory tonight.
“Every win is good to get,” Sendek said. “Every game for us is important. Our guys worked hard Monday and Tuesday in practice despite having some guys out with the flu. There’s a little bit of grit developing as we’ve gone through a number of different things here early in the season.”
The Sun Devils travel down south to Tucson to take on rival Arizona on Saturday with tip off being at 1 p.m. For coverage of the rivalry game at the McKale center check out blazeradioonline.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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