Tag: Arizona State

Arizona State’s DJ Horne picks NC State as his next destination

NC State’s backcourt got a big addition on Monday with a Pac-12 transfer announcing his decision.

North Carolina State added a quality piece to their backcourt on Monday morning when Arizona State transfer guard DJ Horne made his decision to join the Wolfpack. He announced the decision on Twitter.

Horne, a 6-foot-1-inch guard is returning home by picking NC State. Horne is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and played his high school basketball at Trinity Christian School in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Horne will be playing now at the third college of his collegiate career. He originally signed with Illinois State out of high school, spending two years with the Redbirds including a sophomore season in which he averaged 15.1 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 2.7 assists. He would join Arizona State before the 2021-2022 season, where he spent each of the last two seasons, averaging 12.5 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.2 assists over 65 games which included 62 starts.

Now, he’ll return home and suit up for the Wolfpack who will be entering their seventh season under head coach Kevin Keatts. This past season, they made the NCAA Tournament for just the second time under Keatts as a No.11 seed, losing in the first round to Creighton.

Horne will look to help replace the hole left by guard Terquavion Smith In 2022-23, Smith averaged 17.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 4.1 assists before deciding to enter the NBA Draft as a projected first-round pick. The Wolfpack are also set to lose guard Jarkel Joiner who averaged 17.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 3.6 assists this season.

List of transfer portal targets for Notre Dame

At least one of these players could suit up for the Irish next season.

Notre Dame had a horrible 2022-23 season, but no matter what happened, 2023-24 was going to present a challenge. Having barely enough returning players just to to be able to play 5-on-5 is a problem no program ever wants to deal with. Yet that’s where the Irish are after half the previous roster was made up of graduate students and two of their three incoming freshmen de-committed after [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag] announced his departure.

The good news is the transfer portal is more active than ever before. Say what you will about what NIL has done to college sports, but new coach [autotag]Micah Shrewsberry[/autotag] has to be grateful that it has allowed the equivalent of free agency. With only [autotag]Markus Burton[/autotag] on the horizon, he’ll have to bandage up the Irish’s problems with transfers until he has one or two recruiting classes under his belt.

Nathan Erbach of the “Golden Homers” podcast has done a good job of tracking the existing college players who might make South Bend their home next season. Here are the players who reportedly have been connected to the Irish so far, a few of which either are about to visit campus or already have:

Taylor Lewan, Will Compton serving as head coaches in ASU spring game

Former Titans Will Compton and Taylor Lewan will be the head coaches at the Arizona State spring game.

Former Tennessee Titans and “Bussin With The Boys” hosts Taylor Lewan and Will Compton will square off as head coaches in the Arizona State Spring Game on Saturday.

Lewan will be the lead man of the Gold team, while Compton will head the Maroon squad.

This is the last stop on the “Bussin With The Boys” campus tour that has seen the two former Titans make stops at six colleges. The other five were South Carolina, Texas, Ohio State, LSU, and Colorado.

“One of the coolest things that we’ve been able to do since launching Bussin’ on Barstool is interacting directly with our fans, which is why we can’t wait to hit the road to meet with our fans in person,” Compton and Lewan said of the tour. “It’s going to be a blast to visit some of the premier campuses in college football, and do what we do, which is talk football, and life.”

As far as their NFL statuses are concerned, Lewan and Compton remain free agents. Lewan was cut by the Titans earlier this offseason after suffering his second torn ACL in three years in 2022, and Compton didn’t play a snap in the NFL in what would’ve been Year 10.

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Betting guide for the 2023 NCAA men’s tournament First Four games

Best bets for the NCAA men’s tournament First Four games.

The NCAA men’s field of 68 is finally set, which means it’s time to start filling out brackets beginning with the First Four games.

In the South Region, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is playing Southeast Missouri St. for a chance to play 1-seed Alabama in the first round. The other 16-seed First Four game is between Texas Southern and Fairleigh Dickinson in the East, where Purdue is the 1 seed.

The 11-seed First Four games are between Mississippi State and Pittsburgh in the Midwest and Arizona State and Nevada in the West.

Bettors don’t just want to know who’s moving on, they want to know the best ways to make money. So below is my best bet for each matchup, and I also included my best guess for who will move on.

Jaden Rashada commits to ‘my childhood dream school’ Arizona State

In a statement released on his social media page Rashada announced that he’s committed to Arizona State. 

Pittsburg (Calif.) four-star prospect Jaden Rashada came into National Signing Day as the top uncommited quarterback in the country. He’s now made his choice.

In a statement released on his social media page Rashada announced that he’s committed to Arizona State.

“Just want to start off by thanking the Lord for my journey and the strength to get through whatever was & is put in front of me, thank you to everybody who truly knows me for me! Just want to keep this short and let it be known I’ll be attending Arizona State University, my childhood dream school, my fathers alma matter, a place where I’m happy and a school where the Head Coach has always had my back! Glad to truly be home! Can’t wait to carry on the family name at the University and start my journey! Forks up!”

Rashada’s recruitment has been the most volatile of this recruiting cycle. He initially committed to Miami, then flipped to Florida. However, a reported $13 million NIL deal with a booster organization fell through, and Rashada requested and was granted a release from his National Letter of Intent.

Soon after, several new schools got into the race but TCU and Arizona State emerged as the favorites to get him.

No matter how they got it done, the Sun Devils have landed a potent dual-threat QB in Rashada. As a Senior, he threw 32 touchdown passes and rushed for seven more scores. He’s ranked No. 6 at his position and No. 82 overall in his class.

Arizona State’s 2023 class is now ranked No. 36 in the country.

More football recruiting news

No. 1 Athlete Nyckoles Harbor chooses South Carolina

Folsom (Calif.) 4-star TE Walker Lyons commits to USC

Chiefs to practice at Arizona State’s facilities ahead of Super Bowl LVII

The #Chiefs will be working at Arizona State University in Tempe during the week leading up to Super Bowl LVII.

The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles have figured out their practice situations for once they arrive on-site for Super Bowl LVII.

With both teams slated to practice on location during the week leading up to the Super Bowl, they need two separate locations to hold practices for the opposing teams. This is commonplace during the Super Bowl with one team typically taking the practice facilities of the host team and the other team practicing at a nearby college.

As first reported by The Athletic’s Zach Berman, the Philadelphia Eagles will be practicing at the Arizona Cardinals’ team training facilities. The Kansas City Chiefs will practice at Arizona State’s team facilities, including the Bill Kajikawa Football Practice Field. Both are located in Tempe, Arizona.

In Super Bowl LIV, the Chiefs practiced at Baptist Health Training Facility at Nova Southern University, which is where the Miami Dolphins hold their practices. In Super Bowl LV, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the team did not travel to the location until closer to the game in order to limit exposure to the virus. They practiced at the University of Kansas Health System Training Complex given the virtual nature of Super Bowl media week.

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Kenny Dillingham’s first year at Arizona State will be difficult, but 2023 slate has lots of home games

The good news for ASU: 8 home games. The bad news: Home games include USC, Oklahoma State, and Oregon. Also: Utah and Washington on the road.

The Pac-12 Conference has seen a lot of changes this offseason. The transfer portal has been busy, and the coaching staff has changed at a couple of programs.

One of them is Arizona State, which finally moved on from Herm Edwards and hired former Oregon assistant Kenny Dillingham.

When the Pac-12 schedule was released for 2023, the Sun Devils must not have felt good about the quality of opponents on their slate, even though ASU has eight home games.

Jon Wilner of The Mercury News detailed some nuggets of Arizona State’s schedule, and it’s going to be a tough year in the desert as Dillingham gets started:

“The first year of Kenny Dillingham’s tenure features eight home games, most of them early in the season,” Wilner wrote. “The Sun Devils open league play against USC, and the finish is rugged with Utah and UCLA on the road (in back-to-back fashion) and Oregon and Arizona at home. If ASU plans to become bowl-eligible, it needs to have five wins locked up when November arrives.”

The Sun Devils did land Notre Dame QB Drew Pyne, so that’s a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, playing USC to begin and then Utah and UCLA on the road is a brutal slate for them in the Pac-12.

At least the Herm Edwards era is over.

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Vince Iwuchukwu delivers breakout performance, shows why he was so hyped as a recruit

The five-star big man delivered a five-star performance vs Arizona State. This shows what USC might have produced had Iwuchukwu been healthy enough to play in November.

We have told you on numerous occasions that if USC basketball was struggling during this 2023 season, it’s because the Trojans didn’t have their full roster, the roster Andy Enfield expected to have.

The plan was for the returning veterans, Boogie Ellis and Drew Peterson, to complement big man Vince Iwuchukwu. The formula was going to be similar to what the Trojans had in 2021 with Tahj Eaddy and Isaiah White (and others) complementing Evan Mobley.

Active perimeter and wing defenders could use their length to bother guards and small forwards. They could be aggressive and take chances, knowing that if they took away the 3-point shot and allowed their man to drive to the basket, the big man was there to deter the shot and protect the rim.

On offense, Eaddy and his 2021 USC teammates knew that as long as the Trojans avoided turnovers and were able to collect a lot of shot attempts, Evan Mobley could crash the glass and put back the miss. Having a big man to protect the rim on defense and crash the glass on offense enabled the rest of the team to function without too much pressure or an overly small margin for error. The big man enabled the other four players on the court to breathe.

We saw this same reality in evidence on Saturday night, with Vince Iwuchukwu showing us what was always possible for this team if he could play.

Iwuchukwu, in 14 high-impact minutes, showed why he was a five-star recruit out of high school. He has “jump out of the building” athleticism, a high motor, and intense energy. After not being able to play for USC for the first two months of the season, Iwuchukwu — whose minutes are still being appropriately regulated due to having had a health scare — was able to play 14 minutes instead of five or six. Those added eight minutes proved valuable, because Iwuchukwu began to show real signs of getting into the flow of a game for the first time all season.

In 14 minutes, Iwuchukwu was unleashed. His instructions from Andy Enfield are simple, as they should be. There’s no need to overcomplicate anything about his tasks: Protect the rim and the paint. Rebound. Be the last line of defense. Grab missed shots. Go get ’em!

That’s exactly what Iwuchukwu did.

He scored on a couple of putbacks. He was a force near the rim and on the glass. He collected 12 points and 5 rebounds in his limited playing time. In 14 minutes, he showed USC what it had been missing.

Imagine if he had been able to play just 14 minutes against Wisconsin or Tennessee.

USC probably wins at least one of those two Battle 4 Atlantis games in late November. The Trojans might have been able to guard the perimeter better against Washington State, the game they lost on New Year’s Day. USC might have been able to get the big rebound it failed to get in the final 20 seconds at UCLA.

It’s pretty clear to see: With Vince Iwuchukwu, USC becomes a much, much better team. The other four players on the floor don’t have nearly as many responsibilities. Their burden is a lot lighter. Everyone can relax and play according to his role, much like the 2021 team with Evan Mobley cleaning up so many messes on defense.

Now we’ll see if Vince Iwuchukwu can sustain this. If he can, it’s an obvious game-changer for USC.

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USC hammers Arizona State, makes gains in NCAA Tournament bubble chase and Pac-12 standings

USC badly needed at least a split on its Arizona road trip. It got it, and it did so in surprisingly easy fashion in Tempe. This is a big step forward for the Trojans.

There’s a lot to unpack about USC’s 77-69 win over Arizona State on Saturday night. Almost all of it is good. We’re definitely going to focus on Vince Iwuchukwu’s dynamic night and how much that could change this team’s outlook for the rest of the season. We’re going to look at the balanced contributions from several players on the roster. We’re going to deal with the last four and a half minutes of the game, in which USC completely dozed off and gave Andy Enfield a talking point for the coming week of practice.

For now, though — in this piece — we’re going to look at the most important story: USC’s improved position in the race for an NCAA Tournament berth. The Trojans helped themselves a lot with this win.

The Trojans still aren’t a central factor in the Pac-12 race, but with this victory — combined with UCLA’s loss to Arizona — the Trojans are in a position to move one game behind the Bruins if they can beat them next Thursday in a season-shaping game in the Galen Center. Utah is currently in second place in the Pac-12, but the Utes still have to make the Arizona road trip USC just completed. USC improved its chances of getting a first-round bye at the Pac-12 Tournament (which goes to the top four teams in the conference), which means it will have to win only three games to win an automatic bid instead of four, should it come to that.

If the Trojans are in the hunt for an at-large bid, getting a first-round bye means they would not have to play a bottom-tier team (a No. 12 or 11 seed) in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament, which both hurts the resume and puts USC at risk of a profile-killing loss. The win over Arizona State gave USC a lot of leverage in the Pac-12.

Most of all, though, this win gives USC a quality road win on the resume, in addition to the home-court win over Auburn. Utah and Arizona State are the other bubble teams USC is fighting for position. Neither the Utes nor the Sun Devils have a Pac-12 road win as good as this one for the Trojans. Utah lost at UCLA. Arizona State has lost to UCLA and Arizona at home. ASU and Utah haven’t played each other; they eventually will in Tempe later this season.

USC isn’t ahead of Arizona State, but the Trojans are now much closer to the Sun Devils than they were before. USC probably still needs to beat either UCLA or Arizona to feel good about its NCAA Tournament chances, but this win over ASU means that if USC can really clean up against all non-UCLA, non-Arizona teams in the Pac-12, it could potentially have an alternate path to the NCAAs. A win over UCLA or Arizona now feels like a “this will definitely get UCLA into the tournament” win, as opposed to a “USC absolutely must win to have any chance” situation.

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College golf facilities: Arizona State Sun Devils and Thunderbirds Golf Complex

Take a look at the Thunderbirds Golf Complex.

When talking about the best facilities in college golf, Arizona State’s Thunderbirds Golf Complex is on that list.

Located about five miles away from ASU’s campus, the 7,000 square-foot facility resides at Papago Golf Course, a City of Phoenix municipal course which became the home of Arizona State’s men’s and women’s golf programs on Nov. 1, 2018. It features a grand entry lobby, national championship displays, a gym, locker rooms for both men’s and women’s teams, a fueling station, study lounge, team lounge, indoor hitting bays and more.

Six-time major winner Phil Mickelson, an ASU alum, had a hand in the design. It includes a four-acre practice area consisting of five practice greens, four practice bunkers and a three-acre fairway and rough designed to practice every possible golf shot.

Originally built in 1963, Papago Golf Course has become a prominent feature in the college golf world, thanks to “The Bird.”

Here’s a look at more college golf practice facilities.

Photos: Thunderbirds Golf Complex