Sun Devils Exceed Early Expectations Hard Work Is Paying Off For Team Picked Last In Pac-10

Where to begin when you talk about what a shambles Arizona State was before the basketball season?

There was the little matter of the point-shaving scandal from the 1993-94 season that resulted in indictments of two former players.

Then coach Bill Frieder quit.

Did we mention that only one player, Jeremy Veal, had been in the program more than a year?

Or that the Sun Devils went 10-20 last season, winning two Pacific-10 games?

How about athletic director Kevin White spending a couple of weeks trying to hire Utah’s Rick Majerus or Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson before naming Don Newman - a nice guy with a 20-114 career record - as interim coach? Let’s be honest: Arizona State seemed as if it was in for a dose of trouble as big as Superstition Mountain.

Instead, the Sun Devils are 10-3 - equaling their victory total of last season - as they begin Pac-10 play at home against USC on Saturday and UCLA on Monday.

They beat Cincinnati in the Preseason NIT and nearly upset Kansas before losing in overtime, 90-88. So far, the Sun Devils’ only losses are to a couple of Top-10 teams - Kansas and Connecticut, and undefeated Oklahoma State.

Veal is averaging 19.5 points, third in the Pac-10, and forward Bobby Lazor, a transfer from Syracuse, is fourth at 19.2.

Point guard Ahlon Lewis is leading the league in assists, averaging nine a game after setting a school record with 16 against Northern Arizona.

But the Pac-10 still could be bruising, with Stanford, Arizona and UCLA all in the top 10. The Sun Devils were picked 10th this year.

“They picked us dead last,” said Newman, a former University of Idaho athlete and Washington State University assistant coach. “I thought in my own mind: A lot of people don’t know what’s going on in Tempe, the hard work and commitment.”

The Sun Devils are playing hard, and they come by it naturally.

During the 1980s, Newman played in both the Continental Basketball Association, for George Karl’s Montana Golden Nuggets, and in the Canadian Football League, bouncing from Edmonton to Saskatchewan to Hamilton.

“For three years, I was going around the clock,” said Newman, 40, who took his lumps in his first coaching job as Sacramento State moved into Division I.

“Now, if it takes getting up at 5:45 in the morning, we do it. I’m constantly in fear that USC, UCLA or someone out there in the country is outworking us and is going to be hungrier than us.”

His idea of hard work has Arizona State overachieving.

“One, we were a better team than people thought, and Coach Newman has got us playing hard every night and every practice,” Lazor said. “I’m not sure how he does it, but he gets us to play hard.”

It’s not plain hustle though: Arizona State has shot 50 percent or better in 10 of 13 games and is leading the Pac-10 from the freethrow line, at 75 percent.

But make no mistake, the Sun Devils are a running team, and if they’re taken out of their game, things might get tough.

“We like to push it,” Newman said. “I don’t know how many teams we can beat in a half-court game with our set offense, but up and down, we can give people problems.”

Problems, the Sun Devils know about.

“The point-shaving, I never worried about,” Lazor said. “When I heard about it I talked to Coach Frieder and he said it wasn’t going to affect us as a team. There weren’t going to be any violations or NCAA sanctions.

“Then, when Frieder resigned, that was a tough few days because there was so much uncertainty, with all the talk of looking for a coach.”

Not that Arizona State isn’t still looking. White covets a “big-name” coach, and the local paper recently published a list of 14 candidates, none of them named Newman.

“Am I trying to make the decision difficult?” Newman said. “You bet I am.”