Wild ending leaves Arizona State with rough loss to Washington State

Arizona State’s season was headed in a direction where they needed to make some serious noise in the Pac-12 to save it, and they did some of that by taking down rival Arizona on Saturday.

A trip to Washington after that signature win would be the right type of opponents to build momentum on and look to make it four wins in a row. Washington State (12-9, 3-5) and Washington (12-9, 2-6) have had underwhelming seasons and were both teams that ASU could handle.

The Sun Devils, though, did anything but take advantage of this potential bounce-back spot, falling 67-65 to the Cougars in a game where it’s honestly hard to tell if it was more of a heartbreaking loss or a winnable game ASU needed to grab.

At the half, Arizona State had three assists and 15 turnovers. Playmaking off the dribble continues to be a huge issue for Bobby Hurley’s team and they didn’t have the three-point shooting to bail them out. The assist-to-turnover ratio wound up at 9 assists and 21 turnovers and they shot 5-for-19 (26.3%) from deep.

Junior guard Remy Martin has had a strong start to conference play but his top form was nowhere to be found in this one. He played a part in the lack of playmaking with five turnovers and two assists, also shooting 4-of-15 from the field.

Despite how grim those numbers are, the Sun Devils were in this game for the majority of the night. They were only down six at halftime and were tied midway through the second half after a 13-0 run.

That was in large part due to junior big Romello White, who was really the only Sun Devil to be effective in Pullman. He led the team in points (15), rebounds (11) and, somehow, assists (4).

The game got whacky from there.

After being tied at 51 from the 13-0 ASU run, Washington State went on a 7-0 run of their own in less than a minute.

To jump ahead a little bit, with the Cougars up 62-53 and under eight minutes to play, the Sun Devils once again got streaky, this time an 11-0 spurt that took us all the way to the 1:17 mark.

Washington State’s leading scorer CJ Elleby made a mid-range jumper to tie the game at 64 with 42 seconds remaining. On the ensuing possession, Martin drew a non-shooting foul to take a 1-in-1 through the bonus. Marin missed, and after three Washington State players had a chance at the rebound that was about to go out of bounds, the ball somehow wound up in forward Jalen Graham’s hands eight feet from the basket with no one in front of him.

Graham was fouled on his dunk attempt, and the 3-for-6 free throw shooter on the season coming into the night had a chance to give ASU the lead again. His first attempt bounced high off the back iron, partially grazed the backboard and then went through the net. Graham’s second clanged off the backboard, then the front rim, which spun the ball around and it somehow nearly went in again.

With no timeouts, the Cougars ran down and got the ball to Elleby, who hit a step-back three-pointer with seven seconds left.

Hurley had a timeout left, but didn’t use it, and the ball somehow found freshman Jaelen House quickly on the inbound. That seemed to be the plan given how House came to the ball.

Regardless, the team’s star player Martin was looking for the ball, and House tried to pass it to him for the potential game-winner but threw it away, a fitting end to a season-high 21 turnover night.

If you want to see that madness, starting with Martin’s free throw to the end of the game all condensed to 32 seconds, we’ve got the video for you.

#ASU loses a heartbreaker 67-65 late #ForksUp 🏀 pic.twitter.com/gZRKAH3yw3

— GlendaleCardinals (@YotesGlendale) January 30, 2020

Elleby finished with 27 points and 12 rebounds.

Now, the Sun Devils have to try and salvage the trip by splitting it against the Huskies on Saturday. That game is scheduled to tip-off at 8:30 p.m. on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.

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