Harden, ASU pull comeback to upset Stanford

The legend grew a little more, drive after hard-nosed drive. Ask James Harden about another calmly superb night, of carrying the Arizona State men’s basketball team back from the bunker, and he won’t say much about it.

SLIDESHOW: View photos from the game

Instead, he’ll talk about his teammates setting screens and defending inside without six inches and 40 pounds needed to match No. 7 Stanford’s frontcourt.

That’s the chalkboard, X-and-O basketball, but that wasn’t what transformed another double-digit deficit into a 72-68 overtime victory against No. 7 Stanford at Wells Fargo Arena on Thursday night.

Another late night of blink-and-you-missed-it basketball stirred Tempe on Thursday night, as the Sun Devils rebounded from another Grand Canyon-esque hole, a pit they vividly remembered pushing themselves into a month ago in Palo Alto.

This game played out in eerily identical fashion. The Sun Devils (16-7, 6-5 Pac-10) appeared to have no shot of getting to play an extra five minutes, but this time they came back from a 51-37 deficit.

“It seemed like 100-2,” ASU coach Herb Sendek said.

Barely 11 minutes later (90 minutes in real time), they improved to 4-0 in overtime games and snapped Stanford’s seven-game winning streak.

“Lots of guys don’t like to play overtime,” ASU forward Jeff Pendergraph said. “We love it.”

As for Harden, his team-high 23 points felt like another day at the office, especially those eight he scored in overtime while Pendergraph and a suddenly-surging Rihards Kuksiks had to watch from the bench.

Harden suffered through an illness last week, but Stanford suffered through a healthy Harden on Thursday. The freshman went at Cardinal 7-footers Brook and Robin Lopez in the closing minutes of regulation and overtime, and, if he didn’t score over them, got fouled or put back his own misses.

“It’s crunch time,” he said.

The Cardinal (20-4, 9-3) missed four free throws to leave the door open in the final two minutes of regulation. Harden drove the floor, missed, got his own rebound and got two bounces around the rim before it dropped to tie the game at 60-60 and force overtime.

By then, Pendergraph (15 points, 12 rebounds) and Kuksiks (15 points) fouled out, and the Sun Devils were left with Eric Boateng and 6-foot-5 Jerren Shipp to battle the 7-foot Lopez brothers.

They not only held their own, but Boateng, who played one minute until Pendergraph fouled out, came down with the biggest rebound of his young career to retain possession with 44 seconds left.

That “biggest rebound” label may have lasted all of 40 seconds.

Derek Glasser turned that second possession into a free throw for a 69-65 ASU lead, but Mitch Johnson hit a 3-pointer over Boateng.

Glasser followed with two more free throws to make it 71-68, and Stanford had three chances in the final 20 seconds to tie but couldn’t convert.

Finally, Boateng grabbed the third Stanford miss and held on for dear life. He was a 44 percent free throw shooters until he made one of two at the other end, and the latest stirring comeback was complete.

It’s been awhile since Boateng, a sophomore transfer from Duke who’s struggled on the court in limited playing time, let out a wide grin as he cradled the ball at the buzzer.

“To respond the way he did was fantastic,” Sendek said. “We had a lot of things that came together at the right time, in a good way.”

Harden tried to refute Pendergraph’s love of overtime, but after the soft-spoken teenager willed his team Thursday, it was hard.

“We handle them pretty well,” he said.