Cardinal Hangs OnCardinal Hangs On
Associated Press
Men's Basketball

Cardinal Hangs On

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STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Rosco Allen knew his responsibility on the final play. It was something the team had used several times in the past.

Allen had 24 points Saturday night and scored the winning basket with 3.2 seconds remaining to lift Stanford past Arizona State 75-73.

"The first thing was try to get it to Marcus," Allen said. "They denied Marcus, so I looked at the clock and knew I had enough time to get all the way to the basket."

It was his first collegiate game-winning shot.

"We run that play almost every week," Cardinal coach Johnny Dawkins said. "It started on the defensive end when we got the stop. They took away Marcus and Rosco did what he was supposed to do."

Marcus Allen added 13 points as the Cardinal (11-7, 4-3 Pac-12) beat the Sun Devils a fifth straight time at home. Michael Humphrey had 11.

Tra Holder scored 18 points for the Sun Devils (11-9, 1-6). Willie Atwood added 16 points and Obinna Oleka and Savon Goodman each added 11.

"We didn't do a great job of keeping Allen in front, but that was a regular occurrence throughout the course of the game," Sun Devils coach Bobby Hurley said. "He made big plays driving the basketball for them. It was a great drive."

The Cardinal led most of the way, but Arizona State kept it close and took its first lead on Holder's layup with 1:38 remaining to play.

"We made some plays. Willie Atwood was pretty good on offense in the second half, and he gave us a good job of giving us a chance to win," Hurley said. "Overall, you just have a bad taste in your mouth for how we played through large stretches early in the game and again had to climb uphill."

The teams traded baskets and Dorian Pickens hit 1 of 2 foul shots to tie the game at 73 with 35.8 seconds to go.

Stanford made four of its first five 3-pointers and then made 1 of 12 over the next 25 minutes before Grant Verhoven and Rosco Allen hit consecutive 3-pointers in the final six minutes to open a 64-54 lead.

"We gave them a lot of easy baskets and let them back into the game," Verhoeven said. "We have to have more of a cutthroat mentality."

Stanford had an 11-point lead midway through the first half, though the Sun Devils used an 11-2 run to pull within 32-31 with just over four minutes left in the half.

Allen's flagrant foul allowed Arizona State to score five unanswered points as part of the rally.

The Cardinal scored the final four points to take a 40-34 advantage into halftime.

Stanford returns to action on Wednesday when it travels to face Colorado at 6 p.m. The game will be broadcast live on Pac-12 Networks.