Murauskas’ first-half dominance, Croy’s second-half shooting keep Arizona State unbeaten

TEMPE — Each half had its own star during the Arizona State Sun Devils’ 85-63 win over Hofstra on Tuesday.

In the first half, it was all Paulius Murauskas. He scored 17 of his 22 total points in the first half, with the Sun Devils leading 41-32 at the break.

But in the second half, it was freshman guard JRob Croy, who delivered his best performance of his budding college career.

Croy finished with 18 points, but in the second half, he scored 15 on 5-for-6 shooting from the field and making all three of his long-range attempts.

ASU head coach Randy Bennett called Croy’s performance exceptional and noted that it was the main momentum shift of the game along with Ajak Nyuon’s top-of-the-key 3-pointer at the end of the half, marking his first career Sun Devil bucket.

“That little stretch, I told our team probably the play of the game was the (Nyuon) three right before half,” Bennett said postgame. “That was a big play. We were up six, going up nine; he got in for 30 seconds and hit that thing, so that helped. And then the second half started; JRob put on a flurry.”

Croy credited the team’s ability to push the pace on offense, along with Murauskas’ ability to draw defenders, creating open shots for himself and others, for turning out the win.

“When they double Paulius, I mean, I’m gonna get wide-open threes,” Croy said postgame. “But when they don’t, he just goes to work. He’s such a good player, and yeah, it’s hard to stop him.”

So far through three games, Murauskas has feasted on inferior competition (also facing East Tennessee State and Northern Colorado), averaging 25.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.

Bennett mentioned how tough it must be to be an opposing coach to game-plan for Murauskas, given his exceptional ability to get to the free-throw line.

“He’s an interesting player because he draws fouls,” Bennett said. “So you can lose a good player, probably to foul trouble, at some point in that game. He’s good at it. He’s big, and he’s strong.”

Hofstra hung around for most of the first half due to shooting 50% from 3 in the first half, but ASU took the momentum from the Nyuon 3 into the second half with a 20-3 run to separate for the game.

Bennett mentioned that Hofstra was always going to be a good test for his team given its experience and how it was an NCAA Tournament team last season.

“Hofstra’s good, they’ll be good,” Bennett said. “They have some new players, but they’re old. They’re experienced; fourth-, fifth-, sixth-year guys. We’re not that.”

Off to a 3-0 start to the season, Bennett has high hopes for ASU. While he doesn’t want to go into projections, he expects them to be a really good team, similar to some of the better teams he coached during his tenure at Saint Mary’s.

“I think this is going to be a good team in the Big 12,” Bennett said. “It’s not fair for me to guess because I haven’t been through the Big 12, so I don’t know what that’s like.”

ASU will look to extend its unbeaten streak to start the season to four games as it takes on the University of Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks at home on Friday. ULM took Big 12 team TCU to two overtimes on Tuesday, eventually falling 100-92.

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