After opening up conference play with three straight home games, the WSU men’s basketball team is preparing this week for its first true road trip of the 2015 season. The Cougars (8-3, 1-2) will travel to the desert to face off against the two Arizona schools in the Pac-12 Conference.

“I always tell guys it’s definitely the most hostile road trip as far as going to Arizona,” WSU senior forward Junior Longrus said. “You got the Curtain of Doom, they always have a big crowd and they’re fans are pretty ruthless (at Arizona State) and then you go over to Arizona and play at the Mckale Center which is one the premier venues to play basketball in the country and so I tell the guys its definitely a different beast than what we’ve experienced thus far.”

The Cougars will open the trip with a battle against Arizona State on Thursday at 5 p.m. The Sun Devils are led by first year coach Bobby Hurley who previously helped Buffalo reach the NCAA Tournament last season.

{{tncms-asset app=”editorial” id=”9069108c-ba86-11e5-b76b-876cd7e66c09″}}

“They (ASU) play extremely hard, they’re very well coached, they play smart,” WSU Head Coach Ernie Kent said. “So the thing I’m going to engage with him (Hurley), we’re going to have a very competitive basketball game because the one thing about them (is) they will play hard.”

ASU has four players who are averaging double figures in scoring. ASU sophomore guard Tra Holder is the team’s leading scorer with 16.3 points a game this season. In the last seven games Holder is averaging 21.1 points a game.

“When we faced him (Holder) last year it was the same scouting report last year as this year and he is a player that can go off on you and get big numbers,” Kent said. “He’s an excellent point guard and you have to pay attention to detail when you’re guarding him because he has the ability to take the game over.”

WSU redshirt junior center Valentine Izundu will not play against the Sun Devils due to a foot injury. Izundu sat out the last game against Washington. Kent mentioned the redshirt junior’s foot is a lot better than it was last week.

“We’ll look at it again at the two week mark and see if we need to play him in the three week or let it go to four weeks,” he added. “We don’t know.”

With Izundu currently out of the rotation, WSU junior center Conor Clifford is expected to have a bigger role for the Cougars.

“Any challenge and any opportunity I get on the floor I’m going to take with full steam and head on ticket,” Clifford said.

The 7-0, 270 pound center is averaging 7.4 points and 2.3 rebounds in his first season with WSU.

“Obviously we miss Val and his shot blocking so the biggest thing for us is do some things defensively to make sure we hold ourselves a little more accountable to not get beat off the bounce so much like we did in the Washington game and Connor is a big reason that we have an opportunity now just to play him more minutes and when he gets going on his game he’s tough to guard,” Kent said.

Kent added that he will look at playing WSU freshman forward Robert Franks as well with Izundu out.

Tipoff between the Cougars and Sun Devils is set for 5 p.m. on Wednesday in Tempe, Ariz. The game will be televised on Pac-12 Networks.