Saturday was supposed to be a day of redemption for the Arizona St. Sun Devils after Thursday's road loss to the Colorado Rockies. Instead, the Sun Devils managed to score just a shade over 20 points each half on their way to a 64-43 loss to the Utah Utes.
As hard as it may be to believe, this game wasn't even as close as the 21 margin point different indicates. Utah stormed out to an early 12-0 lead that the Sun Devils could not counter. ASU was down 38-21 by halftime.
Things got even worse in the early stage of the second half. ASU failed to score a single point for eight- yes, eight- entire minutes. Walk-on Dave Whitmore broke the drought with 12:00 left to go in the game. By that point, ASU found itself down 49-23. In light of this score, it's pretty surprising that ASU managed to put up 20 more points over the game's final dozen minutes to reach the 43-point total.
Three Sun Devils managed to score in double digits: Carrick Felix had 13 points while Kyle Cain and Jordan Bachynski pitched in 10 points apiece off the bench. Elsewhere, the rest of the team scored 10 points combined.
This road trip proves that ASU is not ready as a team to play without Trent Lockett in the line-up. Lockett rolled his ankle last week against Oregon State but the remaining Sun Devils still won the game without him over the final 10 minutes. That ASU squad was nowhere to be seen over the recent two-game road trip, getting into huge deficits early in both games and never climbing back to compete.
ASU continues its Pac-12 season with home games against the two Washington schools (the Washington Huskies and the Washington St. Cougars) next week. Up first: the Huskies on Thursday.