Sun Devils need Abbott to get right quick

Photo: Paul Connors/AP

After back-to-back home wins vs. UCLA and USC, it looked like Sun Devil sophomore Ty Abbott was shaking out of his shooting slump. In the two games, Abbott made 7 of 16 shots from the field, and averaged 10.5 points per game.

Normally, fans wouldn’t get excited about a guard shooting 44% from the field, but considering the slump that Abbott had been in during Pac-10 play, you can understand the optimism. Up until that point, Abbott had connected on 7.9% (3 for 38) of his threes in conference play. See, 44% sounds good, right?

Instead, Abbott has fallen even deeper into the shooting abyss. Despite playing almost 24 minutes per game in the last 4 contests, Abbott hasn’t scored a point. The Sun Devils have lost three of those games. He attempted two field goals in last night’s 74-64 loss to Stanford, both of them were three-pointers. One of them hit the top of the backboard. The other was an airball.

If this was golf, Abbott would have a bad case of the ‘yips’.

What has happened to Ty Abbott? Here’s a kid who averaged 11.3 points per game and shot a respectable 43% from the field and scored in double figures in 8 of 12 non-conference games. Since then, he’s shooting 20.5% from the field (17 for 83), 12.3% from three-point range (7 for 57) and is averaging 2.8 points per game.

As a freshman a year ago, he hit 76 threes, the fourth most in Pac-10 history for a freshman, proving that Ty Abbott is a shooter. Yet, several times during the telecast of the Sun Devils game on Thursday night, commentators Daron Sutton and Tom Kuyper pointed out how many open shots Abbott passed up, and how most times he has the ball in his hands, he doesn’t even look at the hoop.

So, if you’re head coach Herb Sendek, what do you do with somebody like Abbott? Do you bury him on the bench? Or, do you set him up for success?

Shooters need to shoot their way out of slumps. I’d love to see the Devils make a concerted effort to get the ball in Abbott’s hands early in Saturday’s ball game against Cal, which is shaping up to be close to a must-win for ASU. Let him crank up a couple of early treys and see what he’s got. Even if an opportunity to drive to the hoop and draw a foul presents itself, Abbott needs to take it. He also hasn’t shot a free throw in 4 games, and sometimes something as simple as making a free toss can build a shooter’s confidence.

By no means am I saying that as Abbott goes, so go the Sun Devils. But he hasn’t played well lately, and neither has the team. If Arizona State wants to make some noise in the next two tournaments they’ll play in, they need some contribution from Ty Abbott.

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Tags: Arizona State Basketball, ASU Basketball, Herb Sendek, Softball