Moe Odum leads focused Arizona State to much-needed win vs. Cincinnati

TEMPE — Arizona State picked up a win it had to have on Saturday, beating Cincinnati 82-68 behind 33 points and eight assists from point guard Moe Odum.

Odum hit back-to-back 3s to push ASU’s lead out to nine with 5:21 remaining after an 11-3 Cincinnati run made it a three-point game. The Sun Devils’ lead was never less than seven points after that.

“Moe and I had a good discussion about concentrating on his game,” coach Bobby Hurley said postgame. “He wants to win so badly, I think he was pressing a little bit in a number of different ways and I’m not saying that’s the reason.

“He got good looks. He connected when he had his opportunities. The back-to-back 3s he hit in the second half were huge.”

The Sun Devils (11-9, 2-5 Big 12) had lost seven of their last eight coming into the game, with the most recent loss to West Virginia coming after ASU held a double-digit lead in the first half.

After the loss, Hurley called out poor listening from the players to get done what they talk about in huddles. After Saturday’s win, he said the team responded with one of its best practices.

“It was probably the best we’ve been concentrated and focused, and we looked like the team we were early in the year,” Hurley said.

"I thought we gave them something to cheer about, and it's a two-way street."

Bobby Hurley said the crowd and the focus were better in Saturday's win coming off of Wednesday comments about a "sterile environment" and poor listening. pic.twitter.com/nVBafrgmK7

— Arizona Sports (@AZSports) January 25, 2026

Odum had 17 points in the first half as he and NBA Draft prospect Baba Miller (14 points in the first half) went toe-to-toe, combining to hit 12 shots on 17 attempts.

Noah Meeusen was perhaps most responsible for the win out of any ASU player not named Odum, despite finishing with six points and five rebounds.

He provided a lot off the bench one game after he was targeted by Hurley for missing a foul he was supposed to take at the end of the first half against West Virginia on Wednesday.

That included launching himself out of bounds on a corner 3 to save the ball on a possession that ended with a bucket, as well as poking the ball out from a Cincinnati player and finishing the play in transition.

He also hit a corner 3 off of movement in the second half that pushed ASU’s lead back to double-digits as the Bearcats (10-10, 2-5) were threatening to make a comeback early into the second half.

“Noah just happened to be the lightning rod at the end there. Like he’s really not usually like that,” Hurley said Saturday. “He’s very cerebral about how he thinks about the game and wanting to develop his IQ for the game. And he already has a strong understanding of how to play and he understands angles on defense. He’s very active with his hands. He got some key plays.”

The win puts a pause to the skid, but ASU has yet to win consecutive Big 12 games since joining the conference last season and breaking that would take knocking off UCF (15-4, 4-3) on the road Tuesday.

Senegalese big men go head to head

Massamba Diop and Cincinnati center Moustapha Thiam grew up about a half hour away from each other in west Senegal, with Thiam in the capital of Dakar about 30 minutes west of Diop in Rufisque.

They exchanged looks before a jump ball that Thiam won easily, and there was a collision between the two on the first possession. Diop then left Thiam on a switch and Thiam got a dunk in an empty lane.

The first half continued trending in favor of Thiam before Diop came out with what Odum called a different energy in the second half.

“I kind of got on Masamba earlier,” Odum said. “I feel like he wasn’t playing hard, then he responded in the second half, came out blocking shots, rebounding.”

Diop finished with six points, 10 rebounds and four blocks, with all the rejections coming in the second half.

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