Forget the arguments. After Tuesday, it's obvious that nothing is going to be easy this season for the ASU men's basketball team.
Shaking off a lackadaisical start, an abundance of defensive breakdowns and continued ineptitude against the zone, ASU muscled its way to a 67-56 victory over Delaware State in the Las Vegas Invitational before 7,068 at Wells Fargo Arena.
The ugly victory didn't do much to disprove doubters who claim ASU (2-0) hasn't improved since last season. All it did was confirm junior forward Ike Diogu's dominance.
Playing a full 40 minutes, Diogu poured in 32 points and grabbed nine rebounds. He shot 7 for 12 from the field and 18 for 21 from the free-throw line. He also had three assists and two blocks.
The Sun Devils got 12 points from sophomore guard Kevin Kruger, whose three-pointer five minutes into the second half broke a 38-38 tie, putting ASU ahead for good. Senior guard Steve Moore finished with nine points, despite dislocating a finger on his left hand in the second half.
"You're not ever going to get into a rhythm offensively when teams are running the shot clock down because you're on defense for 30 seconds most of the time," said ASU head coach Rob Evans, whose team atoned for 15 turnovers by shooting 47.6 percent from the field.
Every time ASU built a lead, Delaware State (0-3) stormed back.
The Sun Devils had a 35-25 edge with 1:10 remaining in the first half, but Delaware State scored six unanswered points, cutting the margin to 35-31 at intermission. ASU went ahead 46-38 early in the second half after Diogu converted a three-point play, only to see its lead nearly vanish three minutes later.
The knockout punch came with about 10 minutes left, when ASU went on a 12-3 run, capped by Diogu's dunk off a Kruger miss. Diogu had eight points during the five-minute burst, also converting a three-point play and scoring on a dunk after taking an outlet pass from Kruger.
"I feel like our defense is really improving game by game," said Diogu, whose 18 free throws made matched the school record he set last season. "We're starting to get key stops and key rebounds, so we're definitely getting there."
The schedule only gets tougher for the Sun Devils, who hit the road for a stretch of three games in five days. Playing Friday and Saturday, they'll face defending Western Athletic Conference champion Texas-El Paso and either Vanderbilt or Southern Illinois in the Las Vegas Invitational. On Tuesday, they travel to Temple, which knocked off Georgetown last week.
Evans figures the coming week will enable his team to build some toughness.
"We'll grow from these ballgames," Evans said. "We're a long way from being a real good team. But we're better than we were last week, and that's the thing you want to do -- get better every game."
Reach the reporter at brian.gomez@asu.edu.
