Arizona State looking for ‘more fight’ against West Virginia
After watching his team allow 103 points in a loss at Houston on Sunday, Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley wants to see one thing Wednesday night when the Sun Devils host West Virginia in Tempe.
"There's got to be more resistance, there's got to be more fight," he said. "There's got to be more toughness, there's got to be just better effort on that end of the floor. We're not rotating over, we're not helping each other. Our transition defense was bad.
"We're not going to get any better and win games if we keep letting teams score the way they've been scoring on us."
Arizona State (10-8, 1-4 Big 12) is allowing 80.7 points per game, 326th in Division I, and has permitted at least 84 points in six of its last seven games. Couple that with poor rebounding -- its 33.6 boards per game is 286th in Division I -- and it's been enough to waste some productive offense.
The Sun Devils are scoring 80.4 ppg, led by Pepperdine transfer Maurice Odom (16.3 ppg, 6.4 assists), 7-foot-1 center Massamba Diop (14.2 ppg) and Anthony Johnson (14.2 ppg).
While Arizona State looks to improve defensively, West Virginia (12-6, 3-2) tries to maintain what it did Saturday during a 72-61 home win over Colorado. North Dakota transfer Treysen Eaglestaff scored a game-high 22 points for the Mountaineers, who connected on 26 of 50 shots from the field and dominated the boards 38-22.
First-year West Virginia coach Ross Hodge referred to rebounding as the statistic of the night.
"Trey (Eaglestaff) got us off to an awesome start, and it was kind of a hard-fought, back-and-forth game," Hodge said. "It really played out the way I thought it would. They have been such a good second-half team."
Chattanooga transfer Honor Huff is leading the Mountaineers in scoring at 17.1 points per game and has made 68 3-pointers, tied for third in Division I. Brenen Lorient and Chance Moore each are chipping in 10.4 points per game.
This will be the season's only meeting of these programs.