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Arizona State reserve scores 43 of team's 56 points in 40-point home loss to St. Mary's

Bobby Hurleys Sun Devils played a maddening brand of basketball on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill/File)
Bobby Hurley's Sun Devils played a maddening brand of basketball on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill/File)

Surely, this wasn’t the gameplan.

St. Mary’s trounced Arizona State in Phoenix on Wednesday to tune of a 96-56 drubbing.

But it wasn’t the fact that a Pac-12 team lost by 40 in what amounted to a non-conference home game that stands out.

It’s how they got to 56 points in one of the strangest box scores you’ll ever see.

Wait, what?

A grand total of three players scored for Arizona State, which shot 23-of-64 from the field.

One player connected on 18 of the 23 made field goals. And he came off the bench.

ASU box score
ASU box score

You read that right

That’s not an error. Alonzo Verge Jr, a junior guard who averages 9.6 points per game, came off the ASU bench to score 43 of the 56 Sun Devils points.

Meanwhile, starting forward Taeshon Cherry scored eight points and fellow frontcourt starter Romello White chipped in five.

That’s it. Nobody else on a Division I Power 5 team cracked the scoring column. The eight other players who played against the Gaels combined to shoot 0-for-19 from the field.

Verge ‘had a rhythm’

“He was one of the few guys that had a rhythm on offense,” head coach Bobby Hurley told reporters of Verge after the game. “Once he got going, we knew we had to keep riding him, get him the ball every time down the court. That was frustrating that you have that (few) guys playing well that you have to resort to something like that.”

Focus on the positive

Rather than focus on the 40-point throttling suffered by one of its programs, the Pac-12 opted to celebrate Verge’s big night on Twitter.

Honestly, it’s hard to blame them.

Arizona State isn’t a terrible team. The Sun Devils dropped to 8-3 with the loss with their previous defeats to Virginia and Colorado, each by 10 points or fewer.

But what happened against St. Mary’s was, well ... baffling.

But congrats to Verge on his big night.

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