Dry stretches doom Sun Devils in Denver

Denver

72-70 TCU beat Arizona State. This one will haunt the maroon and gold faithful for a while. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory would be one way you could describe what happened at Ball Arena on Friday night. The other side would say gritty, gutty performance to be proud of, and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, a loss is a loss. We’re not here to sugarcoat.

It was an exciting, high-flying, back-and-forth affair that looked like Arizona State would be moving on to a Sunday matchup with Gonzaga. But the game would be lost with dead stretches in the second half. Arizona State led 54-46 at the 13:15 mark and wouldn’t score again until the 8:58 remaining to make the score 57-54 Sun Devils. The next dry spell proved to be the back-breaker. A Devan Cambridge layup gave ASU a 67-62 lead with 3:32 left. Hurley’s team could only manage three points the rest of the way. Not going to win many games getting outscored 10-3 over the final 3:32 in an NCAA Tournament game. //blockquote%20class=twitter-tweetp%20lang=en%20dir=ltrTHE%20HORNED%20FROGS%20WIN%20IT%20a%20href=https://twitter.com/TCUBasketball?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw@TCUBasketball/a%20a%20href=https://t.co/xSQBHJYU3upic.twitter.com/xSQBHJYU3u/a/p—%20CBS%20Sports%20(@CBSSports)%20a%20href=https://twitter.com/CBSSports/status/1636947290874351616?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwMarch%2018,%202023/a/blockquote%20script%20async%20src=https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js%20charset=utf-8/script”>https://

The Sun Devils led the game for 25:02 of the 40 minutes, but they lost the lead for good on a floater in the lane by TCU with 1.5 seconds remaining. Bobby Hurley had a timeout in his pocket but passed on using it as the desperation heave didn’t fall. After that game he was asked about not using the timeout, “I thought about it as the ball was flying through the air, that one you can put on me.”

So, the season ends with 23 victories, but one loss in Denver that will be hard to forget.