No. 23 West Virginia Takes on a Struggling Arizona State Team

Morgantown, WV - No. 23 West Virginia hosts the Arizona State Sun Devils (10-7, 1-5) Tuesday night for the first ever meeting between the two programs.

The Mountaineers (13-4, 4-2) picked up their biggest win of the season Saturday night after knocking off then second-ranked Iowa State. Javon Small recorded a game-high 27 points and carried West Virginia to the finish line in the last two minutes, scoring 12 of the final 13 points for the Mountaineers to secure the upset.

He made some big-time plays,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said.

“Like a lot of great players, you can tell when they’re in that zone and you could see it in his eyes he wanted to take that game over,” DeVries added. “I’ve seen Javon in practice and in games, when he gets in a zone, he’s really, really good.”

West Virginia forward Amani Hansberry has hit double figures in back-to-back games for the first time since Thanksgiving weekend as part of a four-game stretch of 10 or more points. The sophomore has provided a spark off, shooting 7-13 from behind the arc for the last two games for a combined 28 points.

Arizona State comes into the matchup riding a four-game losing streak, while freshman guard Joson Sanon, a potential first round NBA Draft pick, has been dealing with an ankle injury and missed four of the last five games. Additionally, the team’s leading scorer, senior guard BJ Freeman (13.2 ppg), was landed on during the loss at Cincinnati on Saturday but gutted it out and finished the game with 12 points.

“I just look at it like, you just play the next game in front of you and that’s all you can do – that’s all you can control,” Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley said. “We can’t go back in time and change anything that happened in overtime against Baylor or UCF or this game. All you can do is try to learn from it. Hopefully, the guys continue to refuse to want to lose and have the season go sideways and then they come out and step up and then we find ourselves and that’s just how we’ll look at it going into Tuesday.”

Freshman forward Jayden Quaintance recorded 10 blocks the last two games. He is currently the only player in the nation averaging at least 10.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 3.0 blocks. Quaintance is averaging exactly 10.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, and a conference-high 3.2 blocks per game.

West Virginia and Arizona State will tip-off at 9:00 p.m. EST and the action will broadcast on CBSSN.

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