ASU Finds Positives in Growing Pains

LAS VEGAS -- Charli Turner Thorne talks about playing "Sun Devil basketball" like it's a brand name, and the Arizona State coach has certainly tried to brand her program with a distinctive style of play over her 14 years in Tempe.

Tenacious, in-your-face defense, a healthy rotation of fresh players on the floor, players willing to buy into fewer minutes for bigger payoff.

But with seven new players, five of them freshman and one key player unable to take the floor this season, ASU is doing a little rebranding.

The 14th-ranked Sun Devils left Vegas with two losses in the Holiday Hoops Classics – defeated by No. 13 Texas A&M and No. 6 Baylor on back-to-back nights, but they were the kind of defeats that can be useful.

"The good news is there isn't much we haven't seen at this point," Turner Thorne said after her team's 70-66 loss to the Bears on Sunday night, a game in which ASU recovered from an early 12-point deficit to gain the lead in the second half. "I feel like we've made progress in every game. ... To shoot 39 percent against a team like Baylor and still be in the game, that's pretty stinkin' good."

The Sun Devils (7-3) are a definite work in progress.

Briann January, the best player the program has ever produced, has moved on to a successful WNBA career. Dymond Simon, the team's heart-and-soul point guard is redshirting this year, still recovering from an ACL tear she sustained in the Pac-10 tournament last March, the second of her career.

Turner Thorne, the second-longest tenured coach in the Pac-10 behind Stanford's Tara VanDerveer, is coaching the youngest, least experienced team she's had in a long time.

Turner Thorne is breaking in a new point guard, using freshmen Sabrina McKinney and Tenaya Watson. Senior shooting guard Danielle Orsillo is the team's leading scorer at 13.2 points a game. Kali Bennett, a transfer from Washington, is the leading rebounder at 7.8 per game.

Junior forward Becca Tobin led ASU against Baylor with 16 points.

The Sun Devils came into Las Vegas with a five-game winning streak against a schedule easier than the one that awaited in the desert.

Arizona State's three losses have now come all against ranked teams -- Xavier and Texas A&M and Baylor.

But Turner Thorne has called this a "learning preseason" for her team and learning how to win and gain confidence from those wins is part of the process.

Learning from losses, however, will be the current lesson on the board.

"We've got a young team and they've got to be smart and make good decisions.
When you tell somebody 'Don't do this, do that' and they are still doing it, it's a little bit ... we haven't had a team this young in a while."

At this start of the season Turner Thorne thought this team might eventually turn into one of the best defensive teams she's had at ASU. And that would be saying something. Turner Thorne said she believes her team is still probably a month away from being the consistent team she still sees only in bursts.

Offensively, "we are not the juggernaut we were last year," Turner Thorne said. "It's going to be 'find a way' for us."

"I think we can be really good at the end of the day," Turner Thorne said. "The challenge to our team is, you better do the things we are telling you to do if you want to win. It's a choice you make, you either do it, or you don't."