Two tournament hopefuls in a rocking pit-venue. Are we sure this is October and not March?
In a exhibition bout that had a little bit of everything, the Sun Devils were able to leave Albuquerque with a hard-fought victory, topping the Lobos 91-86.
Now just a week from the season opener, how is new ASU head basketball coach Randy Bennett and the Sun Devils feeling?
Here is everything they had to say postgame:
It was great for us, and I think it's great for them too. But it's hard to get to play a good team in an exhibition, and ours happened to be on the road, so that was even better for us. That's why we did it. We want to get ready for the next one, next one counts. I wish this one counted, all good. We got to play our guys a little bit. Although I wanted to play some of our bench more, they're well coached, and they have things they have to work on. We have things we have to work on, and we know those things better now after we played a good team like that, so it helps us."
"We just play offensively. We're going to play the guys we think can score, (they) take most of our shots, and that's the way it should be. And then defensively, I don't think the size helped us. We got outplayed at the five, so I don't think the size helped us, and it needs to help us, or we need to go a different route. And I think they'll step up, and that's what they heard in the locker room: we lost the boards, and that can't happen."
"Now you know why we brought them,"
"It's big. It's important. We have a team, we have a lot of other good players, (but) these guys, they know exactly what I want. They played for us on a good team and played big roles last year. So the trust is there, both ways. They know I believe in them, and I know they'll come through."
"It was our main goal to play in this kind of environment to see where we are as a team, how tight our huddles are, how we can keep our composure and play for all 40 minutes. I think we did a good job four about 32 minutes, and then the last eight we kind of just didn't share the ball. Especially, we played bad in defense in transition, and it kind of got loud, so we just needed to stay together."
"You have to figure out ways how to score. New Mexico, they gives a lot of threes up. They did a really good job in the post. Kind of played a strange defense, jumping and sending everyone baseline and going to a sort of trap. Their weaknesses, they give a lot of threes ups, so I needed to figure out how I can score, and today it was this way, but maybe another day it's gonna be zero threes, maybe free throws, rebounds. Whoever knows, you just have to figure out the ways how how the team will be."
"Defense, and rebounding also. We were minus one on the boards, and we want to be a real good rebounding team. So, practice hard and just be good, good defensively. We need to do a better job there."
"It was great, honestly. It was our first time ever experiencing this with the live crowd, so I would say it was a great way for our team to get out there and just play someone at their place, and that was a crazy home advantage, I would say, because it gets loud in there. But I would say it was a great experience for us to see where we are, where we stand, and then we just got to close out the game better than what we did. So it was a great experience."
"It's just the nature of the game. I feel like anybody on our team can get high at any certain moment. We're just in the right spot at the right time. So I would just say we do a good job of swinging the ball, swinging the ball around, and getting us open shots."
"Being good in both halves, we did pretty well in the first half. We kind of stepped off of the gas, I would say, in the second half. But just being consistent through both halves, closing out and being better. Those are the two base keys"
ASU will now focus on their next opponent: East Tennessee State, opening their season at home against ETSU on Nov. 2
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/arizonastate as Everything Randy Bennett, Arizona State Said After Their 91-86 Exhibition Win In New Mexico .
