Sports Radio Service


		Shell-shocked Cardinal happy to escape Tempe By Daniel Dullum January 30, 2010

	TEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State’s Ty Abbott drained a 3-pointer eight seconds after the opening tip Saturday afternoon to kick-start the Sun Devils’ offense against Stanford, and by the time he let up, the Cardinal found themselves in a 32-point hole at the half. Abbott nailed his first six shots from behind the arc, sparking two blistering first-half runs as Arizona State cruised to an 88-70 men’s basketball victory over the visiting Cardinal, who never led in the Pac-10 contest. Arizona State improved to 15-7 overall, 5-4 in the Pac-10, while the Cardinal lost it’s second game in a row and slipped to 10-11 on the season, 4-5 conference. An announced crowd of 9,406 at Wells Fargo Arena watched Abbott, a 6-foot-3 junior guard, connect on 11 of 14 from the floor – 7 of 9 from 3-point range – and finish with a game-high 29 points and a career-high 12 rebounds. “Sometimes, you get some great open looks, keep going, and it has a snowball effect,” Abbott said. “There’s no way to know it’s going to go like that. It’s just the feel of the game. “The guys did a good job of setting screens for me. I hit a couple, and they just kept going back to me.” Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins acknowledged that Abbott not only got ASU off to a great start, but that Abbott “hit two or three 3’s with hands in his face. When you’re hitting like that, the basket gets bigger and bigger. “I thought it got big for him, and their entire team,” he continued. “You try to stick with your game plan and have the kids stay focused on what we were trying to accomplish. We knew (ASU) was a good 3-point shooting team; we just didn’t do a good enough job defending the line.” Sun Devils guard Derek Glasser agreed and took that analogy a step further, saying that the basket for Abbott “was like an ocean.” Faced with a 54-22 halftime deficit, Dawkins simply told his squad “to hang in there and keep on fighting and take it possession by possession to try and work our way back into the game, knowing we’re not going to get it all back in one possession. “I think sometimes kids try to press and panic and speed up; they end up making more mistakes, instead of settling in executing offensively,” Dawkins continued. “We tried to lock in better on the defensive end and get stops. We did a much better job of that in the second half once we were able to come in and talk about it.” After a tough loss to California on Thursday, Sun Devils coach Herb Sendek wasn’t willing to concede that it was ASU’s “best half ever,” but said, “there was nothing different about what we did, we just made a high percentage of shots (56 percent – 28 of 50) and Ty was fantastic.” Nineteen of Arizona State’s 21 first-half baskets were assisted. Glasser finished with 10 assists off the Sun Devil bench, and Lockett had eight. Dawkins observed, “I haven’t seen that in any college game. Give them credit because they played very well together.” “We didn’t necessarily take better shots, but we did take our time on our shots and we did focus better,” Abbott explained. “In the last two games, we missed a lot of open looks, so we made it a point to relax and shoot our shots. A lot of guys did that today and it paid off.” After the opening five-minute,18-5 run in which Abbott hit four 3’s and Rihards Kuiksiks canned another, Abbott’s fifth 3-pointer sparked an 11-minute, 21-0 run that included his sixth trey. During that stretch, Demetrius Walker had a basket and free throw, Trent Lockett had a dunk, Eric Boateng and Abbott converted layups, and back-to-back 3’s by Kuksiks and Lockett provided the exclamation point. Stanford never recovered. “It’s tough when you dig a hole like that, because then you have to play perfect basketball,” Dawkins said. “Kids aren’t going to play perfect basketball, so it’s tough. But I thought ASU played terrific basketball.” Stanford’s offense perked up in the second half, primarily behind Jeremy Green, who scored 18 of his 20 points in the final 20 minutes. Jarrett Mann sank a pair of free throws to cut the Cardinal deficit to 12 at 77-65 with 3:36 remaining. ASU responded with an eight-point run over the ensuing 90 seconds on eight free throws by Glasser, building their lead back to 20 at 85-65. “You’re using a lot of energy to try and catch up, and the kids are fighting for every possession at that point,” Dawkins said. “We couldn’t play perfect basketball. A turnover or a bad shot becomes a big play. You try to make whatever plays you can make.” “At each end, you want to cut the lead down,” Cardinal guard Landry Fields, who led Stanford with 20 points, said. “We did that, but after we got to within 12, there just wasn’t enough time left in the game.” After shooting a dismal 0 for 10 from 3-point range in the first half, Drew Shiller made the Cardinal’s first 3-pointer of the game with 15:30 left in the second half. Stanford outscored the Sun Devils 48-34 in the second half, aided by an improvement to 44 percent shooting from the floor (16 of 36). “In the second half, we coiuldn’t find our purpose and we were a little lackadaisical defensively on their shooters,” Abbott said. “They had to hit some to wake us up.” Stanford hits the road again next weekend, traveling to Los Angeles to play UCLA on Thursday night and Southern California on Saturday afternoon.