We saw what was easily one of the weirdest box scores ever on Wednesday night. The St. Mary’s Gaels beat the Arizona State Sun Devils 96-56, with Alonzo Verge Jr. scoring 43 of the Sun Devils’ 56 points off the bench.
It’s crazy impressive to see a player score 76% of his team’s points. What’s even crazier is that he did it off of the bench. Reserve players aren’t supposed to do that — especially on the college level.
How did this even happen? Let’s take a closer look at the film.
Verge was the entire offense
Verge took 29 of his team’s 64 shots yesterday. No one else had more than nine shots. Only two of his teammates scored in the game. He straight up took things over and wasn’t productive while he did it.
Verge was a -38 in the box score. That’s not good. After watching this highlight reel, you’ll see why.
There are lots of TOUGH buckets from Verge there. There are fantastic highlights and noteworthy moments… just coming from him alone.
He ran a ton of pick and roll and got going downhill in the half-court, but he only used his ability to penetrate to score for himself. He didn’t create much for his teammates — he had two assists next to five turnovers. That’s bad offense when you’re touching the ball that much.
On top of that, only six of Verge’s 29 attempts were from deep. The Sun Devils shot 22 total from long range and only made three. Meanwhile, the Gaels hit 16 of 26 attempts from three-point range. Simple math says that’s a blowout.
You still can’t blame Verge for shooting
None of this is Verge’s fault, by the way.
He’s always been a bucket. When his team was down big, he went back to what he knew. As the illustrious Jordan Crawford once said, “who else gon’ shoot it?” Verge was just trying to win.
Head coach Bobby Hurley — yes, that Bobby Hurley — explained it best.
“Once he got going, we knew we had to keep riding him and give him the ball just about every time down the court. That was frustrating that you have that little of guys playing well that you have to resort to that tactic,” he told reporters after the game.
That’s kind of just it. Nothing too much to read into here. It’s not typically how things go — Verge only averages 9.9 shots per game. It probably won’t happen again.
But, man, was it ever weird.
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