Remy Martin's 30 points were not enough, as the Sun Devil men's basketball team lost to the Oregon Ducks 75-64 in Tempe on Thursday night with Marcus Bagley (ankle), Chris Osten (ankle) not playing due to injuries and Josh Christopher fighting through a bruised leg and then a bad fall on his back after a block attempt.
After being down by 17 points with 6:27 left in the second half, ASU (6-9, 3-6 in the Pac-12) fought its way back by going on a 10-0 run, sparked by a Martin three, but it wasn't enough as Oregon (11-4, 6-3) stayed out in front.
Having lost freshman guard Josh Christopher in the second half due to an injury, it was Martin's game as he scored a game high 30 points, with 12 of them coming from behind the arc. This was Martin's fifth career game scoring 30 or more points.
REMY MARTIN 30+ SCORING TILTS
33 at Princeton (11/26/19)
31 at Grand Canyon (12/13/20)
31 vs. Arizona (1/31/19)
30 vs. Oregon (2/11/21)
30 at UCLA (2/27/20)
With multiple players out, the Sun Devils had a big task at hand controlling the boards. With leading rebounder Marcus Bagley out, senior forward Kimani Lawrence stepped up and led the game with a career-high 12 rebounds. As a team, ASU outrebounded Oregon 43-42.
Sophomore forward Jalen Graham has continued his streak of great play after coming back from mono, as he finished the game with eight points on 4-of-6 shooting and nine rebounds.
JALEN GRAHAM TOP REBOUNDING GAMES
11 at Arizona/Jan. 25, 2021
9 vs. Oregon/Feb. 11, 2021
7 at Washington/Feb. 1, 2020
7 vs. Arizona/Jan. 25, 2020
JALEN GRAHAM'S PROGESS
2019-20/2020-21
MPG: 10.9/23.9
PPG: 3.2/7.9
RPG: 2.8/4.3
Playing in just his fourth game of his career, sophomore forward and Morenci native Joel Olmsted finished with two points and two rebounds. His signature play came off an energizing dunk in the first half.
The Sun Devils look to get things back on track as they face the Oregon State Beavers on Sunday at 5 p.m. on ESPN2.
TRA AND REMY: Remy Martin has 1,560 career points and 433 assists. The only other Sun Devil who reached those combined marks is Tra Holder, who had 1,797 points and 448 career assists.
SUN DEVIL CAREER SCORING CHART
1. 2,044 – Eddie House, '96-2000
2. 1,984 – Jeremy Veal, '94-98
3. 1,946 – Ike Diogu, '02-05
4. 1,834 – Ron Riley, '92-96
5. 1,797 – Tra Holder, '14-18
6. 1,673 – Stevin Smith, '90-94
7. 1,588 – Jeff Pendergraph, '05-09
8. 1,572 – Byron Scott, '79-83
10. 1,560 – Remy Martin, '17-present
ASSISTS
1. 551 – Derek Glasser, '06-10
2. 454 – Bobby Thompson, '83-87
3. 448 – Tra Holder, 14-18
4. 444 – Lafayette Lever, '78-82
5. 433 – Remy Martin, '17-20
SUN DEVIL HEAD COACH BOBBY HURLEY QUOTES
OPENING STATEMENT
"Hats off to Oregon, they were really ready to play. Duarte came in and really had a great half, got them off to a great start. They're getting healthy, getting their guys back and they're a really good team. I'm not disappointed with the effort we put forth, I thought we shot it a little quick at times in the first half, a couple no-pass possessions that we couldn't really afford to have. It was tough to see [Jalen] Graham get his second foul and not be able to play the minutes I'd hope he would play but he did very well in the second half and as did Kimani Lawrence with 12 rebounds, and John Olmsted who had a nice play. For a walk-on to come into play, he did well for himself. I came into this game knowing what I know about who was going to be available, we needed Remy and Josh, or Remy and Zo, or Josh and Zo; we needed two guys that really had a special game for us to have a real good chance and we weren't able to get that. Remy had a big night offensively; Josh, when he had that great block and landed, was not right after that. He already came into the game with a bruise in his lower leg, so he was not moving great in the second half and we thought it was the best thing to shut him down. Tough night in that regard."
ON HOW TO PREPARE OFFENSIVELY
"I'll review the film, but we were 3-of-14 from three and I thought we had some pretty decent looks in the first half and we just didn't shoot it great. Being down seven, we needed two more in that first half to go down for us. We shot it better in the second half, shooting 6-of-12. That's been a common theme, and certainly the way they play is unique with their three-quarter court pressure and the matchup, and like I touched on I thought when the ball was down at the other end in the first half, we had a few possessions where we went too quick without passing the ball at all. When we do that it doesn't generally result in anything positive unless we have a really clear advantage."
ON LACK OF DEPTH ON BENCH AND JOHN OLMSTED'S PERFORMANCE
"Josh doesn't play the four and he was out playing the four today with really small lineups. John, I thought came in and played like a pro, the situation wasn't too big for him, he was solid and did the right things while he was out there and didn't really make any mistakes or errors, so he was very solid. He's a hard worker and a great kid, he was one of the first guys getting back in the gym in July and that's what I reminded him of when he was preparing for the game tonight."
ON NOT KEEPING ALONZO VERGE IN THE CLOSING LINEUP
"Zo's numbers were not great today; he wasn't in a great rhythm on offense. I liked the energy that House and Holland were providing, even Caleb Christopher to go in and get a charge for us in a key moment and to be able to somehow cut it to seven even though we shot 33% for the game and to be that close was a pretty good statement as to just how hard these kids are playing despite a ton of adversity."
OREGON HEAD COACH DANA ALTMAN
"I thought our ball movement was a little better. I thought we did some good things against their pressure, [we committed] only 12 turnovers. The only area I'm disappointed in is just the defensive rebounding, which has been a problem for us. We don't block out very well and they had 20 second-chance points. But other than that, [we did well with] points off turnovers, points in the paint, we did a lot of good things, we made seven of eight free throws. I'm just a little disappointed with the rebounding."
ON DUARTE'S RETURN
"He did a tremendous job [with] getting himself ready. He was in the training room ever since last Thursday, [and] he's been in there every day for a week. He tried going a little bit yesterday and said he thought he could go and got off to a hot start, so without practicing, he really did a great job."
ON LJ FIGUEROA'S THREE-POINT SHOOTING
"He needs to get it going. He's a good three-point shooter, we've seen that practice. I thought he worked really hard this past week. I told him that if he's going to take those three he's going to have to start hitting a few more in the games and he really focused and did a better job, but I thought it was a big lift when he hit a couple of those in the second half."
ON DUARTE'S HEALTH
"With no practice, I didn't know what to expect [from him]. He got warmed up, he said he felt great, and that hot start made me reluctant to take him out. He was getting a little tired there before the end of the first half [because] I kept him in there too long, and then he took a long break in the second half just because the other guys were playing well and then he's a really good free throw shooter so I wanted him in there late to get fouled. He did a very good job."
ON RETURNING AFTER A LACK OF PRACTICE
"What I'm really excited about is [that] we didn't hit on all cylinders. Eric hasn't practiced and hasn't done much yet, but he went in and got nine rebounds. Amauri [Hardy] and Jalen [Terry] were quite sharp offensively, but I liked what they did defensively and handling the ball. Amauri had three assists and no turnovers, Jalen had three assists and one turnover, so although they didn't score, they did some good things. I think it's exciting we've got our team now. If we keep everybody healthy, avoid any more pauses, I think we can get better and better, we [have] four or five weeks here try to make a run. It's exciting to get all together and I think we [have] a lot of upside. To be honest, I'm not sure if it was a great indicator. Arizona State was coming off another pause, I know how hard that's been on our team with coming off pauses, and they didn't have [Marcus] Bagley. It's really tough and Arizona State's been hit as bad as we have, so we [played against] a team that was a little out of sync, we pushed that lead up, had a couple of bad turnovers that allowed them to get back in it, but I thought we did a good job. We're going to find out [more] against Arizona, a good team, on the road Saturday at noon."
ON IF HE WILL GO BIGGER ARIZONA
"It was a lot of small lineups and went five wide, which makes it really hard on Frank [Kepnang] to go out and guard some of those guys, but Arizona will play big [with] Frank, Chandler [Lawson], Eugene [Omoruyi], and Lok [Wur]. We'll need Eric [Williams]'s rebounding again, so it'll be a big challenge, we're going to have to do a much better job on the boards, that's really obvious."
SENIOR LF FIGUEROA
"Every team has been dealing with battles all season long, but we got the win [and] we're getting better game by game. We finally got our whole team together and we're finally starting to mesh together and able to hoop and see how good we can be."
ON HIS THREE-POINT SHOOTING
"I talked to coach McKenna the last couple of days in practice and he tells me all the time, 'shooters shoot and think about the color green in your head, think positive, just think, 'green, green, green,' every time you shoot. Just relax your mind and at the end of the day, you put in the work and the time in the gym, [so] it's going to come.' With the coaches we have and the confidence they build in me."
ON THE LACK OF PRACTICE FOR THE TEAM
"We've been used to it all year: guys out with COVID, having to quarantine and [the] next man steps up. The good thing about this team [is that] coach [Altman] always tells us, 'guys on the bench, be ready,' because you never know what's going to happen. From the starters to the walk-ons, coach always tells us to be ready. And it just feels good to have all the guys on the floor, obviously we're missing N'Faly [Dante], guys had minor injuries, but everybody got a fight through it. And dealing with COVID, it's just a battle, and as long as we stay together, we're going to be good."
ON THE NUMBER OF ASSISTS
"We feel good. Everybody's touching the ball and playing defense. They beat us on rebounds, coach always emphasizes, 'rebound the ball, rebounding wins games,' so it's good that guys are thinking defense first, and then getting the ball out to each other. I think that's when we're at our best, when everybody touches the ball. Our point guards Will Richardson and Amauri [Hardy] do a good job at trying to find the hot hand, and we're still getting better day by day to just fill our games up."