The Phoenix Suns‘ starters built the lead Tuesday night, but the story underneath the 133-110 win over the Los Angeles Clippers was the bench — a season-high 81 points, and the player who drove it playing his first game in more than a week.

Jordan Goodwin scored 18 points in 13 minutes, 6-for-7 from three-point range, in his return after missing four games with a calf injury. Head coach Jordan Ott, asked how big Goodwin was off the bench, went past the points to the energy Goodwin brings at all times. “General enthusiasm for life and basketball at a high level,” Ott said. “And tonight, on top of it, made shots. It feels like every time it leaves his hands, it’s going to go in.”

Goodwin, asked what he does with that energy when he can’t play or practice, said the bench nearly got a workout out of him during the games he missed. “Last game I almost sweat up there, getting active, trying to get the guys going,” he said. “I try my best just to be myself, 24/7.” And on a night he went 6-for-7 from deep, he said the heat check never came because the offense never called for one. “I had no need tonight,” Goodwin said. “The guys were finding me. The ball was moving the right way.”

He traced the shot itself back to the summer — with the shooters this team lost, he knew the role that was waiting for him. “All summer it’s just been shooting,” Goodwin said. “That’s a key role I need to do with this team, especially losing the shooters that we lost. I just wanted to take that next step.”

The shooting night was the team’s, not just his. The Suns took 43 threes and made 22, a night after taking only 26 in the loss to San Antonio. The volume, Ott said afterward, is where he wants this team to live. “We got 43 up tonight — I think it was 26 last night,” he said. “That’s where we want to live. We want to live a little bit above that, taking high-quality shots.” Ott had challenged Collin Gillespie after the San Antonio game to find his shot inside the flow of the offense, and Gillespie answered with 12 points and eight assists. “Collin took the message well,” Ott said. “Any time you get him up there — eight, nine, ten threes.” Luke Kennard, who scored 14, is on the same instruction: let it go when a smaller defender switches onto him.

Goodwin closed his availability on Ryan Dunn, and his point was that the response matters more than the ribbing Dunn takes from his own teammates. “We all be on him pretty hard, but the way he responded this year is very impressive,” Goodwin said. “I love where it’s headed right now.” At 4-6, with the bench producing a season high, a returner shooting like a summer’s worth of work, and the homestand continuing  Thursday against Charlotte, the Suns’ coach and his sixth man are describing the same thing — a second unit that is starting to look like an identity.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Kings (5-9-2) put 30 shots on goal Tuesday night and got nothing for them, shut out 3-0 by the Nashville Predators (9-4-5) at Crypto.com Arena behind a 30-save performance from Juuse Saros.

The Kings are at home for a while — a seven-game homestand that runs through Saturday — and Tuesday was the fifth game of it. The stand stands at 2-3-0: an overtime win over Ottawa, losses to Buffalo and Pittsburgh, a 7-2 rout of San Jose, and now this. The last road trip ended Oct. 27 in Chicago, at the end of a five-game swing through Washington, the New York Islanders, New Jersey, the New York Rangers and Chicago that the Kings finished 3-2-0. Home ice was supposed to be where this got fixed.

Instead the Kings kept pace everywhere except the scoreboard. Shots were even at 30. Los Angeles won 52 percent of the faceoffs and out-hit Nashville. None of it mattered, because the Kings could not finish — not at even strength, and not on their two power plays, which came up empty.

Filip Forsberg did the damage at the other end. He beat Anton Forsberg 5:20 into the first period for his sixth goal of the season, assisted by Nils Hoglander, and again 10:32 into the second — his seventh, with Hoglander and Brady Skjei assisting — for a 2-0 lead the Kings never dented. Adam Wilsby‘s unassisted empty-net goal, his first of the season, with 2:17 left in the third closed the scoring.  

Anton Forsberg gave the Kings a chance, stopping 27 of the 29 shots he faced, but Nashville blocked 21 shots in front of Saros and absorbed 19 penalty minutes without breaking. The homestand continues Thursday night against the New York Islanders and Saturday against the Calgary Flames. Nashville plays Wednesday night at the Anaheim Ducks, 8 p.m. MST on ESPN+.

TUCSON — The score of the Arizona Wildcats‘ 90-59 win over the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks on Tuesday night was settled early. What Tommy Lloyd took from the night was something else — a team starting to play the way his program is built to play.

The clearest sign sat in two numbers: 26 assists against six turnovers. Lloyd’s point after the game was that the assists are not a target his team chases. They are what comes out of playing the right way — the pace, the decisions, the ball moving to the open man. That has been this program’s identity for years, he said, and Tuesday it looked like itself again: “To have 26 assists and six turnovers in any game is a great thing.”

It is also why Lloyd resists calling Ivan Kharchenkov — 20 points, seven rebounds and seven assists against Northern Arizona — his primary scorer. His thinking is that Kharchenkov is simply making the right basketball decision in the moment, and that the attention defenses pay him is a trade Arizona wins. Load up on Kharchenkov, and the Wildcats get open looks everywhere else. “If teams want to pick their poison and give us a bunch of open looks,” Lloyd said, “we’re going to feel good about that.”

The scoring, Lloyd expects, will spread out as the season goes. Early in a year, a team leans on its veterans — Motiejus Krivas gave Arizona 16 points and seven rebounds Tuesday — and the younger players come on as the season deepens, the pattern he saw last season after Koa Peat’s big first game. He is not worried about the slow starts, either. Caleb Holt missed open threes he normally makes, and Lloyd shrugged it off — Holt is a good shooter, and the looks were the right ones. On guard Dedan Dixon‘s quiet starts, his answer was shorter: “I just tell him to make his shots.” The better Dixon plays, Lloyd said, the better Arizona is — it is really that simple.

The development he talked about most warmly was Bryce James. James’s line Tuesday was small — three points in 13 minutes — but Lloyd’s interest is in everything around the shot: the hustle plays, the connecting plays, a young player getting comfortable. He has made no final long-term decisions on his starting lineup, he said, and questions about shuffling it when another player’s situation — guard RJ’s status remains in limbo — resolves are speculation he will not join. What he knows is that James keeps taking advantage of the opportunity in front of him.

Underneath all of it sits the idea Lloyd kept returning to: the season is a continuum, and the work is growing inside it, day to day. Asked what this team needs to work on most, he would not name one thing. The mindset itself — understanding that progress is the season-long job — is the thing he wants his team to wrap its arms around. At 2-1, with a  trip to Auburn coming Friday, the Wildcats’ coach sees a group that practiced well, played with better energy and better intent, and is starting to recognize what it is.

TEMPE — Arizona State beat Hofstra 85-63 Tuesday night, and afterward head coach Randy Bennett explained where his 3-0 team stands: big enough to control a game like this one, and not yet sound enough for what is coming in January.

The defense is his concern. Bennett explained that the Sun Devils play the game in four-minute segments and try to win as many of those as they can, and that the staff’s standard is five made threes allowed in a game. This team keeps giving up eight — in the exhibitions, the scrimmages and the early games — and the rebounding has to tighten with it. Hofstra came in plus-18 on the boards over its first two games, a physical team that sends all five players to the offensive glass. Bennett’s answer was his size, and above all Paulius Murauskas, who had 22 points and 11 rebounds. Everything runs through the seven-footer: he draws fouls, he puts the other team’s good players in foul trouble, and how the opponent guards him is, in Bennett’s words, the centerpiece of their scout.

The ball is the other concern. The Sun Devils turned it over 13 times, three of them thrown away in transition in the first half, against a Hofstra team that does not press or trap — it just grinds. The push itself, getting out and running, Bennett said has been consistent; the passes have to be better.

What the night showed the other way was the shooting he recruited for. Bennett explained that a big part of the summer was bringing in players who can shoot, because a team that cannot shoot is easy to guard. It showed in the two stretches that decided the game: a three by Jacques in the last 30 seconds of the first half — Bennett called it probably the play of the game, taking the lead from six to nine — and the flurry that opened the second half, three straight threes from JRob Croy and Foxwell, that pushed the game out of reach. Croy scored 18, and Bennett said he will keep getting better: the freshman lost his senior year to injury, is still getting his shape and his game back, and is doing it in the Big 12 for a new coach in a new system. Bryce is on the same road, back from an injury that kept him out until late July, and when those two are out there with Foxwell, Bennett said, this team can explode.

One return is still ahead of him. The player who has been out three and a half weeks is back in shooting drills and some practice, not yet five-on-five, and Bennett said some of what remains is apprehension. Friday is realistic, he said, but he is not positive. The absence has given the younger players key minutes they would not otherwise have had.

Bennett closed by explaining the gap he keeps talking about. He compares this roster, player for player, to his Saint Mary’s teams that lived around the top 25, and he puts this group in that conversation — it just has not done it yet. There are 14 nonconference games to chip away at, three of them done, a little better every day. Hofstra, with its fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year players, was the kind of old, experienced team that tells a coach the truth, and Arizona State beat it by 22 while its coach listed everything that still has to be fixed. That is where the Sun Devils are: unbeaten, bigger than the teams in front of them, and building toward a Big 12 schedule their coach calls a brawl.

PHOENIX — Devin Booker passed Julius Erving on the NBA’s all-time scoring list Tuesday night, and the Phoenix Suns (4-6) buried the Los Angeles Clippers (2-8) under 22 three-pointers in a 133-110 win at Mortgage Matchup Center.

Booker scored 17 points in 29 minutes, enough to move past Erving’s 18,364 NBA points and into 78th place all time. The number carries an asterisk of respect: Erving played in the ABA before he ever reached the NBA, and those years do not count on the NBA’s list — his combined total is 30,026. Passing Dr. J is passing one of the men who made the modern game, and Booker, the Suns’ all-time leading scorer, did it in a Suns uniform, where every one of his points has been scored.

The other main key was the shooting. The Suns hit 22 three-pointers — 22-of-43, 51.2 percent — and shot 55.7 percent from the field for the game. Phoenix led 29-18 after one quarter and 64-47 at halftime, pushed the lead as high as 32, and was never threatened in the second night of a back-to-back, one night after a 26-point loss to San Antonio.

Once it became a blowout, much of the third and fourth quarters went to the bench, and the bench is where the game was loudest. The Suns’ reserves outscored the Clippers’ bench 81-62, led by Jordan Goodwin, who returned after missing four games with a calf injury and scored a team-high 18 points in 13 minutes — 6-of-7 from the field and 6-of-7 from three, with 15 of the points in the first half. Goodwin hurt the calf Nov. 2 at Golden State and sat out Portland, Orlando, Houston and San Antonio; in his first game back he was a major factor among the subs, the spark that blew the game open before halftime.

Collin Gillespie added 12 points and 8 assists off the bench, ending the first half with a 35-footer at the buzzer. Luke Kennard scored 14, Jalen Green 13, Khaman Maluach 11 points and 7 rebounds, and Ryan Dunn 10 points and 8 rebounds. Starters Dillon Brooks and Miles Bridges had 8 points each and Oso Ighodaro 6 points and 7 rebounds in a night when no Sun played 30 minutes.  

Phoenix owned the game everywhere but one place. The Suns outrebounded the Clippers 48-37 and had 32 assists to Los Angeles’ 28. The one thing they did not have was the ball: 18 turnovers to the Clippers’ 12, the lone blemish on a night that was otherwise all Phoenix.

Darius Garland, Rui Hachimura and Baba Miller scored 13 points each for the Clippers, who played without Bradley Beal, Brandon Ingram and Cam Christie, all inactive. Max Strus had 12 and Derrick Jones Jr. and Keaton Wagler 11 each.

The Suns continue their seven-game homestand Thursday, Nov. 12, against the Charlotte Hornets.

LAS VEGAS — Rashunda Jones made one of two free throws with 19 seconds left to make it 62-58, Arizona State’s defense created two turnovers in the final seconds, and the Arizona State Sun Devils (3-0) hung on to beat the UNLV Lady Rebels 65-58 on Tuesday night.

The game came down to Arizona State’s ability to make plays down the stretch, and Jones was in the middle of all of them. When UNLV cut a 12-point lead to one point at the end of the third quarter, it was Jones who went to the line and made both free throws to push it back out. When the game sat at three points in the final minute and UNLV’s Trystan James missed both of her free throws with 26 seconds left, it was Ruby Whitehorn who rebounded the second miss for Arizona State, and Jones who drew the fouls and made the closing free throw. UNLV’s struggles at the line were a factor — 7-of-16 for the game — and Arizona State made the plays that made those misses cost.

The Sun Devils made it harder than it had to be. Arizona State blew leads at the end of both the third and the fourth quarters, and its 15 turnovers kept handing UNLV chances to come back. But the Sun Devils never gave up the full lead. Every time it shrank, Arizona State found a way to extend it again.

The end, from the Sun Devils’ side: Meadow Roland’s basket with 1:14 left cut it to 61-58, and Arizona State then missed, and Jones fouled James at 0:26. James missed both free throws, Whitehorn took the second rebound, and UNLV had to foul Jones twice in the last 20 seconds. She missed the first and made the second — 62-58 — and the Arizona State defense created two turnovers in the final seconds to finish it. 

The comeback the Sun Devils had to survive started with their own giveaways. At the game’s highest point, 41-29, Marley Washenitz stole it from McKinna Brackens and scored to make it 41-38, and after an Arizona State timeout, Roland stole it from Jones and scored to cut it to 41-40. Madison Morson answered with a jumper that pushed the lead back to 44-40, but James scored to make it a one-point game, 44-43. Heloisa Carrera’s offensive foul gave it back once more — then UNLV returned the turnover, Jayla Constant fouled Jones, and Jones made both free throws for 46-43.

In the fourth, Arizona State rebuilt the cushion at the line through Ayanna-Sarai Darrington: a foul drawn on Roland and two free throws, a steal from Washenitz, another foul drawn on Washenitz and two more free throws — four straight, 48-46 to 52-46. The Sun Devils then went cold: Roland blocked Darrington’s jumper, and Brackens missed twice around offensive rebounds by Whitehorn and Morson, and Jasmyn Lott’s basket cut it to 52-50 with 7:47 left.

Darrington extended it again — an offensive rebound and her own layup for 56-52 with 5:04 left. Washenitz cut it to 56-54 with 4:19 left, and the Sun Devils survived their own misses from there: Deborah Davenport missed a layup, Lott’s offensive foul gave Arizona State a break, Jones missed a layup, Carrera pulled the offensive rebound, and a three

TUCSON — The Arizona Wildcats (2-1) beat the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks 90-59 on Tuesday night at McKale Center, and the game turned on the ball: Arizona forced 15 Northern Arizona turnovers against only 6 of its own, with 11 steals, and ran off them all night.

Northern Arizona scored first for a 2-0 lead, and Arizona led the rest of the way — 46-22 at halftime. The Wildcats shot 61.7 percent from the field (37-of-60). Northern Arizona shot cold overall at 41.2 percent, but from three the Lumberjacks were the better team — 9-of-26 (34.6 percent) against 8-of-25 (32.0) for Arizona — and the rebounds stayed close, 26-21 to the Wildcats. What Northern Arizona could not overcome was giving the ball away.

The second half is where Arizona ran away with it — fast-break points off the turnovers and the defensive rebounds. Cameron Holmes scored on a layup off a Kharchenkov feed, Motiejus Krivas followed his own offensive rebound with a layup and then set up Kharchenkov inside, Caleb Holt stole the ball from Chris Komin and finished the run with a dunk, and Krivas scored again off a JJ Mandaquit assist to make it 77-46 — the turnovers becoming runouts, possession after possession. The Wildcats shared it the same way at the other end: 26 assists on 37 made field goals.

Ivan Kharchenkov ran the game for the Wildcats: 20 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists. Four Arizona starters scored in double figures — Holt had 17 points and 3 steals, Krivas 16 points and 7 rebounds on 7-of-9 shooting, and D. Dixon 12 points — and Mandaquit came off the bench for 9 points and 7 assists without a turnover.

Komin led Northern Arizona with 17 points and 5 assists, and R. Abelman added 14 points.

The Wildcats go on the road Friday, Nov. 13, at Auburn, 7 p.m. on ESPN2

Notes: Max Majerle related to former Suns great Dan Majerle  5 pts 1-5 fg 3 free throws 3 rb 2 assist but 4 turnovers

Arizona’s Bryce James father Lebron James, James vs NAU 13 minutes 1-3 field goals, 1-3 3pt 2 assist,1blk

TEMPE — The Arizona State Sun Devils (3-0) beat the Hofstra Pride (1-2) 85-63 on Tuesday night at Desert Financial Arena, and the game was what head coach Randy Bennett has been talking about: this is the tallest team in school history — the third-tallest team in NCAA men’s basketball — and a team built like that has to dominate the boards. The Sun Devils did, outrebounding Hofstra 43-17, with 14 offensive rebounds to the Pride’s 5.

Arizona State led 41-32 at halftime behind Paulius Murauskas, who had 17 of his 22 points in the first half to go with 11 rebounds for the game.

The shooting followed the same line. Arizona State shot 48.3 percent from the field to Hofstra’s 38.1, went 13-of-26 (50.0 percent) from three against 8-of-21 for Hofstra. The one loose spot was the ball — the Sun Devils turned it over 13 times to Hofstra’s 6 — on a night when the size covered for it.

The game broke open in the second half — on the boards and with the ball moving, Arizona State started going. On consecutive possessions the Sun Devils hit three straight three-pointers: JRob Croy from the left wing off a Murauskas feed, Croy again from the right wing off another Murauskas feed, and Joel Foxwell from the top of the arc. With about 14 minutes left it was 58-35, and the Sun Devils were pulling away. Hofstra made a small run late, and it was not enough.

And the ball moved early. The Sun Devils had 14 assists by halftime — 17 for the game, against 9 for Hofstra — with Joel Foxwell dealing 6 of them and Murauskas 3 more. The ball popped from the start, and the open man got the shot.

Foxwell ran the offense with 16 points and 6 assists, and freshman JRob Croy gave the Sun Devils 18 points, hitting 4-of-6 from three in his third college game. Afterward, on the ESPN+ broadcast, Croy talked about the way this team plays for each other — the bench coming off its feet to celebrate a free throw before the break — and said:

“It’s awesome. This team is so special. I feel like we all get along super well not just on the court, but off the court — we’re definitely just trying to celebrate each other’s success every time we step on court.”

1. Tavarez led Hofstra with 12 points, and N. Jefferson had 11 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds for the Pride.

The Sun Devils stay home and host Louisiana-Monroe on Friday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m.

© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

TUCSON — The University of Arizona comes into today with a positive impact and a lot of energy that needs to roll into Saturday’s game. The Arizona Wildcats (7-2, 4-2 Big 12) host the No. 2 Utah Utes (9-0, 6-0 Big 12) at Casino Del Sol Stadium on Saturday night, and everything about this week says the program believes its moment is here.

Part of the week is bigger than football. The coaches will celebrate tomorrow with Veterans Day, and the main coaches and their families have served in the military. Defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales carries it personally — his father was a Vietnam War veteran, his grandfather served in World War II, his great-grandfather in World War I, and his nephew, in the reserve, will be here for the game this week. Gonzales, talking about the pride he has in the service members in his life, said:

“I just have the tremendous honor and the pride that I have in those family members of mine. We’re just so grateful and thankful for all that they give up so that we can enjoy the things that we enjoy.”

The rest of this organization believes that this team has found its way through a connection at its core that Arizona hasn’t had in quite some time — a coaching staff that believes in each other, be it the offensive coordinator, the special teams coordinator or the defensive coordinator, men who have spent time with others on the staff  at other places. It is literal with Gonzales and special teams coordinator Craig Naivar, who was a graduate assistant at New Mexico when Gonzales played there. Gonzales, talking about that 30-year connection, said:

“I’ve known Craig for 30 some years. I still love sharing ideas with him — he watches our practice, all the defensive side when he’s not with the specialists, and we talk.”

It worked as recently as last week, against a very good TCU organization. Arizona didn’t let them go far, came away with the victory, and put smiles on the coaching staff’s faces. The plays told the story of the staff itself: Tre Smith’s blocked field goal, set up by Tay Brown clearing the gap — Naivar, talking about the block, said:  

“Tre Smith is blocking the kick, but Tay Brown basically launches the tight end out of the way so he can’t help in that gap — and that’s just violence of action.”

Then came the recovered onside kick, the clock burned down, and kicker Michael Salgado-Medina winning it at the end. Gonzales, talking about what a kicker does for a team, said:

“Kickers are like erasers — they erase the mistakes of somebody, because we didn’t get a first down or we didn’t do this. Michael Salgado-Medina saves the day.”

The whole thing, though, is that this organization still hasn’t done what many have done — get the fans to come out for a sellout. The biggest crowd at Casino Del Sol Stadium this season was 45,477 for Iowa State, in a stadium that holds 50,800, and head coach Brent Brennan said it plainly this week: “We haven’t gotten it done this year, but this is the game for that.”

Now this Saturday marks the time when that has to change. Saturday night is the game between No. 2 Utah and Arizona — the national pregame show on campus in the morning, the No. 2 team in the country at night, and a program that has found its connection at exactly the right time. If Arizona does what it has to do, it can win this game — and fill the stadium doing it.

Kickoff is 5:30 p.m. MST Saturday on FOX; in Phoenix, the game is on KFNX 1100 AM.