Through 20 minutes of play, it seemed like the prolific shooting display from Saturday in Tempe had translated to Lawrence, Kansas.
At halftime, that momentum made a swift escape.
Arizona State (10-4, 1-2) couldn’t muster anything offensively in a thumping 74-55 loss to No. 11 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse on Wednesday night.
“We knew we would have our hands full,” head coach Bobby Hurley told reporters after the game. “It was going to be a really brutally tough game. I thought we executed well, particularly on offense, we closed out possessions good. We didn’t start the [second] half good rebounding. We made them miss a couple times, didn’t get the rebound, and that kind of set the tone defensively… We just started digging a hole for ourselves and couldn’t get out.”
After the Jayhawks took a quick 6-0 lead out of the gate, both teams traded baskets in a first half that saw 11 lead changes.
Freshman forward Jayden Quaintance met the biggest test of his young career so far and answered the call. Taking on graduate center Hunter Dickinson, Quaintance was active in the first half. He tallied nine boards over the senior and made several defensive stops laying out on the floor to create fast-break chances for the offense.
“I thought JQ handled himself well,” Hurley said. “Really battled, contested shots, rebounded…he played excellent defense for us. He played more minutes. We’ve got to try to get more from our bench and be able to give me the opportunity to get him off the floor.”
With freshman guard and leading scorer Joson Sanon (ankle) sidelined for the second straight game, senior guard Alston Mason led the team with 19 points, while senior guard BJ Freeman added 10 more.
“I wanted to come out and be aggressive,” Mason said after the game. “Just kind of set the tone for our team. Get guys involved but also look for my shot. I ain’t been shooting the best, but this game I was fortunate enough to just keep looking for it.”
The pick-and-roll was wide open in the first half for the Sun Devils. Screens by Quaintance and senior forward Basheer Jihad created open shots from beyond the arc for Mason and Freeman, which led to Sun Devil triples. The veteran backcourt also used the Jayhawks’ aggressiveness against them with drives and late passes to Quaintance underneath for points.
Kansas and Arizona State both shot 46.7% from the field, but ASU took a 42-36 lead into the locker room.
The second half was a different story. When the offense dragged, the Sun Devils didn’t rely on the roller for easy buckets. Kansas locked down the perimeter and turned the game into a track meet. ASU turned the ball over 12 times in the final 20 minutes and allowed the Jayhawks to run the floor and score at will.
“We just kind of came out sluggish,” Mason said about the second-half struggles. “That’s kind of been a problem for us, just like starting halves off bad, so we got to work on that.”
Dickinson posted 15 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks and three steals as Kansas built a second-half lead. Kansas senior guard Zeke Mayo turned in a strong performance down the stretch with 23 points and five three-pointers.
Arizona State shot 0-8 over a scoreless seven minutes to start the second half until an offensive rebound by Quaintance turned into a three-pointer made by redshirt senior guard Adam Miller. That ended up being the only bucket from long range that the Sun Devils made in 11 attempts in the second half. Freeman picked up his fourth foul with more than 12 minutes remaining in the game, extinguishing the best threat behind the arc that the Sun Devils had left.
“We’re short-handed without Joson right now,” Hurley said. “So we couldn’t afford to have guys in foul trouble. We’ve done a pretty good job this year of not getting in foul trouble. That certainly hurt us. But also [Freeman] picked up two after he had 10 points early in the game.”
The Sun Devils settled for bad shots outside and were not physical enough in the paint to sustain any offensive rhythm. Kansas outscored ASU 38-13 to turn a hard-fought battle into a blowout in the blink of an eye.
The loss was Bobby Hurley’s first to the blue blood program. Hurley took down the No. 2 Jayhawks in the Phog in 2017 and pulled off the upset again a year later in Tempe.
“They’re a really talented team,” Hurley said of Kansas. “Really turned up their pressure on defense with their press and that cost us some baskets and the game started getting away from us quickly. We weren’t able to stop the bleeding at any point, trying to get an easy basket somehow just to get us going again. Points were hard to find for us in the second half.”
Recently, the Sun Devils have been riding a rollercoaster of blowouts. Since Dec. 3 at home against San Diego, ASU has either run opponents out of the gym or been doing the running themselves. It hasn’t posted a single-digit win or loss since Nov. 29 against Saint Mary’s.
They’ll try to get on the right side of the scoreboard on Saturday when they return home to face Baylor at Desert Financial Arena.
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