Let's get back to our big basketball game tomorrow night. As I said before every single one of these games are now shaping up to be huge games given the fact that Pac-10 is turning out to be perhaps the best basketball conference in America. BBR has the preview up for ASU:
After finishing 11-17, 5-13 last season with no senior starters, Arizona State fans were looking forward to big improvements with a more experienced team - except it hasn't work out that way.
When former Sun Devil coach Rob Evans was replaced by Sendek, Kevin Kruger, the team's leading scorer, took advantage of a new NCAA rule and transferred to UNLV, to play for his father Lon. Later in August, another top player, Bryson Krueger, was dismissed from the team for an off the court incident.
Fortunately for Sendek he has help coming next season when high school stud James Harden and Duke-transfer Eric Boateng join the team. In the meantime, the Sun Devils are struggling and will have difficulty getting even a single conference victory in the tough Pac-10 this season.
While Arizona State is giving up just 63.9 points per game, fourth lowest in school history, they are scoring just 62.5 points. The Sun Devils are shooting only 42.8% from the field, and aren't getting it done at the free-throw line either at 63.7%.
Sendek runs a variation of the Princeton offense which stresses ball control and motion. But the team is still learning the new offensive system and perhaps lack the right personnel to run it effectively at this point. Although the offense should result in low turnover totals and high percentage three-point opportunities, the Sun Devils commit 15.3 turnovers a game (9th in Pac-10) and shoot just 30.7% from three-point distance (9th in Pac-10).
With all the changes in the roster, four true freshmen are combining to average 87.1 minutes, including three who play more than 25-minutes a contest. As a result of depth issues on the team, the Sun Devils have played primarily a seven-player rotation in conference games.
As usual make sure to read the whole post which has the lowdown on individual matchups in tomorrow night's game. I am interested in seeing how Luc plays tomorrow. As you may know the word is he has been battling through some nagging knee injuries this season. And he is still battling through it. Hopefully he is getting better. If we can have the old Luc of last season who was an unstoppable rebounder and force under the bucker, we are going to be fine.When former Sun Devil coach Rob Evans was replaced by Sendek, Kevin Kruger, the team's leading scorer, took advantage of a new NCAA rule and transferred to UNLV, to play for his father Lon. Later in August, another top player, Bryson Krueger, was dismissed from the team for an off the court incident.
Fortunately for Sendek he has help coming next season when high school stud James Harden and Duke-transfer Eric Boateng join the team. In the meantime, the Sun Devils are struggling and will have difficulty getting even a single conference victory in the tough Pac-10 this season.
While Arizona State is giving up just 63.9 points per game, fourth lowest in school history, they are scoring just 62.5 points. The Sun Devils are shooting only 42.8% from the field, and aren't getting it done at the free-throw line either at 63.7%.
Sendek runs a variation of the Princeton offense which stresses ball control and motion. But the team is still learning the new offensive system and perhaps lack the right personnel to run it effectively at this point. Although the offense should result in low turnover totals and high percentage three-point opportunities, the Sun Devils commit 15.3 turnovers a game (9th in Pac-10) and shoot just 30.7% from three-point distance (9th in Pac-10).
With all the changes in the roster, four true freshmen are combining to average 87.1 minutes, including three who play more than 25-minutes a contest. As a result of depth issues on the team, the Sun Devils have played primarily a seven-player rotation in conference games.
Hopefully we can see some of that old Luc tomorrow night.
GO BRUINS.