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Arizona State Post-Mortem

AMurawa — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:31:21 +0000

Now that all 12 conference teams are officially in the offseason, it’s time to take a look back and evaluate each team’s 2012-13 performance. Today we start with Arizona State.

What Went Right

A lot of things went right for the Sun Devils this year, as they won 12 more games this season, but a lot of those things stemmed from the eligibility and success of freshman point guard Jahii Carson. He was this team’s catalyst from start to finish and many of the areas in which ASU improved can be directly traced back to him. Carrick Felix’s offensive explosion? It certainly [...]

Celebrating Arizona State Senior Carrick Felix

AMurawa — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:31:46 +0000

It’s that time of the college basketball season when you look up out of nowhere and notice that conference tournaments tip off in a couple weeks, Selection Sunday is in a smidgen over three weeks and before you know it we’ll be crowning a champion and watching a “One Shining Moment” montage. But before we get ahead of ourselves, one of our favorite traditions of the end of the season is Senior Day, a chance to pause for a brief moment, get the student-athlete at the end of the bench that has worked tirelessly for little fame or glory a [...]

Pac-12 Report Card, Volume VI: Solid Students

AMurawa — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:15:36 +0000

Yesterday we unveiled this week’s honor roll; today we take a look at five teams earning good, solid, average grades. Check in later today for the four teams that will be serving detention this week.

Cal – B-

All things considered, this was a solid week for the Golden Bears. They went down to Arizona for what is considered to be the toughest road trip in the conference this year and came away with a split, including a win over a national top-10 team and a four-point loss to a very good Arizona State squad. That makes three wins in four tries [...]

Pac-12 Report Card, Volume V: Solid Students

AMurawa — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:01:43 +0000

Yesterday, Professor Pac handed out good grades to all his pet pupils. Today, he takes a look at a few students who might not be quite as pleased with their most recent grades.

Arizona State – B+

A pair of road games in Washington, a delayed flight out of Pullman to Seattle, and a split with the last game being at least partially decided on a very questionable no-call at the end? There’s no way I’m going to punish the Sun Devils too much for that week. Still, when you shoot, as they did against Washington — a nearly 75% effective field [...]

Pac-12 Team Previews: Arizona State Sun Devils

AMurawa — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:45:41 +0000

Throughout the preseason, the Pac-12 microsite will be rolling out these featured breakdowns of each of the 12 league schools. Today’s release is the Arizona State Sun Devils.

Strengths. The biggest strength the Sun Devils may have this season is enthusiasm, confidence and camaraderie. Two years ago, a combination of bad luck and senioritis killed the team’s season before conference play had even gotten into the grind. Last year, poor team chemistry and low expectations conspired to sap ASU of energy before even the New Year. This year, there is a swagger about the program, in part due to the confidence [...]

Arizona State Week: One-on-One With Jahii Carson

AMurawa — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:00:52 +0000

Point guard Jahii Carson signed with Arizona State as the crown jewel of their 2011 recruiting class, a four-star recruit rated by ESPNU as the eighth-best point guard in his class. With lightning quick speed and stunning athleticism, Carson was supposed to provide Herb Sendek and the Sun Devils with a pure point guard, something that the team had been missing in 2010-11. But, after being declared academically ineligible for the 2011-12 season, he spent last season watching from the bench as his new team struggled to a 10-21 season. However, Carson’s academics are back on track and he is [...]

Arizona State Week: Running Down the Returnees

AMurawa — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:15:15 +0000

Five different players who earned significant playing time in 2011-12 return for Arizona State. While the two players that averaged more than 13 points per game (Keala King and Trent Lockett) are not among them, the Sun Devils return a solid foundation upon which to build their 2012-13 campaign. Below we’ll take a look at those five players, in order of last season’s scoring average.

Carrick Felix, Senior, Wing (10.5 PPG, 4.0 RPG) – Felix was a bastion of consistency in one area last season: Of the 29 games that he played in, he played 30+ minutes in 21 of them. [...]

Arizona State Week: Evaluating the Recent Past

AMurawa — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:48:05 +0000

Over the course of the next 12 weeks, during the dog days of summer while there is relatively little going on in the college basketball world, we’re going to take the opportunity to fill you in on the status of each program in the Pac-12. Beginning this week with Arizona State, we’re going to dedicate a week’s worth of Pac-12 microsite posts to each program in the conference. We’ll take a little bit of a look at the recent history of the program and then dig into what the team is going to look like in 2012-13. Along the way [...]

Arizona State: 2011-12 Post-Mortem

AMurawa — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:39:59 +0000

Over the course of the next two weeks, the Pac-12 Microsite will break down each team’s season: what went well, what didn’t, and a look ahead at the future. Today’s subject: Arizona State.

What Went Wrong

Herb Sendek had a ton of bad luck this season. Freshman point guard Jahii Carson fought with the NCAA over eligibility issues well into December before finally being declared ineligible (he came up either one letter grade in a high school class or one ACT point away from eligibility) for the year. And transfer Chris Colvin struggled mightily early in the season (35.3 eFG% and 0.92-to-1 [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 03.27.12 Edition

AMurawa — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:02:02 +0000

While college basketball as a whole is in that dreaded five-day lull between the Elite Eight games and the Final Four games, we’ve at least got some leftovers to keep us sated as we wait. Last night’s menu featured game one of the three-game CBI championship series, and Washington State, playing without its best player Brock Motum, built a 12-point second-half lead against Pittsburgh, then held on to win, dodging a last-second shot to emerge as a one-point winner. Senior Abe Lodwick picked up the slack for the Cougs, going for 16 points, while junior point guard Reggie Moore had [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: MLK Day Edition

AMurawa — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:01:43 +0000

Being the optimists that we are here at RTC, we want to get the week started off on the right foot, so we’ll begin with the best win over the weekend, a dramatic road victory by Oregon over Arizona on Saturday afternoon. After the Ducks built up a 17-point lead early in the second half, they eased up on the gas just a bit and before you knew it, they were down in the final couple minutes. A big three by Garrett Sim stemmed the bleeding and put Oregon back up with under two minutes to play, but he later [...]

Pac-12 Power Rankings: Week Eight

Connor Pelton — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:07:10 +0000

Here’s a look at the power rankings that Drew and I have compiled after the eighth week of Pac-12 games. Here we go!

1. Stanford, 12-2 (2-0): The Cardinal didn’t spare any hearts after beating the LA schools by a combined nine points this week. On Thursday night it was a grind-it-out, defensive thriller as Stanford stopped UCLA on their final possession for a 60-59 win. Then on Saturday, the Cardinal built a double-digit lead, only to see it be cut down to three with two minutes left. However, Stanford would hit its shots down the stretch to hang on for a 51-43 win. Up [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 12.21.11 Edition

AMurawa — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:01:12 +0000

Three games in the conference last night, none all that interesting, although I suppose it is worth noting these days when the Pac-12 gets through a weeknight without sustaining any more losses. Arizona faced the toughest competition when they hosted Oakland and their talented and prolific senior point guard Reggie Hamilton, but the ‘Cats survived as they “held” him to 31 often spectacular points. Solomon Hill played just about as well as he’s ever played, scoring 23 points, grabbing 11 rebounds, handing out three assists and refusing to let the Wildcats lose. Elsewhere, freshman Norman Powell had a career-high 19 [...]

Arizona State’s Jahii Carson Declared Ineligible

AMurawa — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:30:30 +0000

After a long drawn-out process, Arizona State freshman point guard Jahii Carson was finally declared ineligible for this season, following the results of an ACT test that came up just short of the score needed to qualify on the NCAA’s sliding scale. Carson was a top 50 national recruit out of Mesa High School in Phoenix, expected to take over the Sun Devil point guard position from day one and give Herb Sendek’s team the speed and electricity necessary to run a higher-tempo style of basketball. However, after Carson’s transcripts from a summer class came up short of qualifying him [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 12.05.11 Edition

AMurawa — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:00:53 +0000

It was another busy weekend for Pac-12 basketball teams, and replicating previous weeks, it was another weekend piled high with losses and roster turnover. To kick things off with relatively happy news, USC had expected sophomore forward Dewayne Dedmon to miss four to six weeks with a stress fracture. As it turned out, it was closer to four to six days that Dedmon missed, as he returned to action Saturday when the Trojans traveled to Minnesota, losing 55-40. Dedmon showed up to the game with a boot on his right foot, but played anyway, and although he didn’t contribute much [...]