The battle for the state of Arizona will tip off in Tempe tonight when two long-time rivals engage in a critical Pac-12 showdown.
Arizona sits atop the conference standings, but in their rear view mirror is 7-4 Arizona State led by Jahii Carson. A home win tonight would do wonders not only for their hopes of potentially competing for the conference crown but also for the possibility of them getting back to the NCAA tournament.
ASU is 18-6 overall and has been quite strong in the last month. They lost their home conference opener to Washington back on January 2 but have defended their home venue in every instance since. Carson is the leader of their attack, but he is joined by a slew of key role players who have come into their own with time.
Jermaine Marshall and Shaquielle McKissic provide Carson with scoring options, thus taking the heat off of what had been largely a one man show in the 2012-2013 season. Both players are big guards who do a lot of little things for this club in addition to scoring the ball.
Jordan Bachynski could be the key clog in their ability to make a run here, however, and his presence in this sort of game is magnified tremendously by the absence of Brandon Ashley. When the two teams met a season ago, Ashley was instrumental component of an interior defense that slowed Bachynski tremendously.
Kaleb Tarczewski is a similar player to Bachynski in certain ways, but he is not as versatile or as athletic laterally as the aforementioned Ashley. I look for Bachynski to have more of an impact on this sort of game than he did in both meetings last year as a result.
Another major reason as to why Arizona was able to handle the Sun Devils so easily in those two games goes back to their perimeter quickness. They have tremendous versatility at the guard position and can throw multiple bodies at Carson. Mark Lyons defended him for a large portion of those games, but the overall help mentality incorporated by Sean Miller’s club was also a huge factor in their success.
Carson was actually quite good in both meetings a year ago, but he was not able to dominate the game as he usually does. That’s because few teams rotate defensively and contest shots with the regularity Arizona demands of its players. They are fully capable of providing help while scrambling back to a man and contesting the shot upon rotation.
They were able to do that with effectiveness because they didn’t have to worry about boxing out down low thanks to the Tarczewski/Ashley combo. In their two outings since losing Ashley, they have seen mixed results regarding their performances. They were manipulated at times by a decent Oregon club that has a plethora of scorers. They contained Roberto Nelson and Oregon State and cleaned up the glass in the second game en route to an easy 22 point win.
If you believe ASU can cover the 5.5/6 point spread assigned to this game, you have to trust in their role players making shots and competing on the glass. Arizona is unlikely to run anyone out of the gym with their offense, but their defense can become grueling to have to deal with.
While most of this ASU lineup is actually pretty solid, they have very little in the way of a bench and have struggled to find the right combination at power forward, with both Jonathan Gilling and Eric Jacobsen splitting minutes.
That sort of question mark combined with the ability of the Arizona defense to frustrate this Sun Devil offense makes it a difficult position to back. The betting public seems to agree as this game is split virtually down the middle, with the Sun Devils commanding 52% of spread bets to Arizona’s 48%.
I look for a fantastic game tonight. This meeting will tell us quite a bit about where Arizona is coming off the massive injury to Ashley as it’s their first road game since he went down. Additionally, we’ll see if this ASU team has grown up at all. They need to prove they have the depth and substance to beat a team like Arizona, especially considering the Wildcats are wounded.
I would have looked to Take Arizona at a reduced number just based on the belief that their defensive tenacity has historically been difficult for this Sun Devils team to deal with. That being said, getting a full six at home when you have the best player on the floor and the opposition is missing one of their most important pieces leads me to believe that ASU is the right call here.
ASU +6
