Quote:
Originally Posted by EricaLubarsky
Watched Ayton 25-16-4
Im impressed
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I watched the first half. I thought Fran Fraschilla paid him a huge compliment when he said, "I challenge anyone to find a play, offense or defense, where DeAndre Ayton isn't giving it his absolute all". I hadn't heard anyone praise Ayton's motor like that before.
I thought Arizona State lost him a few times that led to easy scores, and I didn't see Ayton do anything too terribly impressive in the first half, outside of one mid range 1-on-1 move he had that led to a sweet looking jump shot. I do think Ayton let some easy layup attempts go unchallenged; although, it was clear he was following his defensive rotations, which is something I saw Chandler Hutchinson do vs Nevada a few times. I don't know if you can criticize a prospect for that or not. Probably if we were aware of the actual defensive assignments their team had, we'd probably learn that they were suppose to go guard the corner 3 & a teammate had failed to rotate over in the lane. Something like that. I still think you have to penalize them a little bit for not protecting the basket, but maybe their coach has instructed them otherwise.
One thing that is clear about Arizona is they don't run the offense through Ayton. If they did, I think he could average 40 & 25. Somebody here said awhile back that Arizona doesn't have anybody besides Ayton. They seem to run the ball through Alonzo Trier & Rawlie Alkins more than Ayton. Also they're Arizona, virtually every recruit was an ESPN100 player coming out of high school... So, Ayton isn't getting all of the looks that he could (maybe even should be getting). I think it's significant to recognize that he could be putting up much better #s, if Arizona were running it's offense to showcase him. Actually makes me wonder what Real Madrid is doing in respect to Luka Doncic because all we see are the #s...