As of today, Arizona State is not the best team in the Pac-12.
That’s not debatable. The Sun Devils’ ceiling may be the highest among their conference cohorts, but in terms of full body of work, there’s no argument to be made that ASU is still the league’s frontrunner.
Any other year, that’d be fine. It’d be normal. Honestly, to expect otherwise would seem irrational.
But 2018-19 will forever be remembered as the season that redefined all logical thought of what it means to follow a Power 5 conference.
It’s no secret that the Pac-12 is in danger of being a one-bid league — as in, a league solely represented by the conference tournament champion that earns its automatic bid — when this year’s NCAA Tournament rolls around.
With just one of its teams ranking inside the NET Top 50, every single Pac-12 member is on the bubble at best. In my latest bracket projection, conference-champion Washington holds a No. 10 seed, while Arizona sneaks in as a No. 11 seed, playing in the First Four in Dayton.
Arizona State, after its recent loss to Stanford, compounded upon a Jan. 3 loss to Utah and a Dec. 29 loss to Princeton, is the sixth team outside the field.
The overwhelming trend to be noticed there is that the best the Pac-12 has to offer is dangerously hovering near the cut-off. Even its champion wouldn’t be all that secure in an at-large bid on its own merit.
But, with conference context laid out, let’s zero back in on the Sun Devils résumé. If the season ended today, the NCAA selection committee would see the following information (through games of Jan. 14):
NET: No. 82 KenPom: No. 63 Sagarin: No. 60 BPI: No. 59 KPI: No. 45 Strength of Record: No. 66
Quadrant 1 (Home games vs. NET 1-30, Neutral vs. 1-50, Away vs. 1-75)
WINS: vs. No. 13 Kansas (Dec. 22), No. 33 Mississippi State (Nov. 19), No. 40 Utah State (Nov. 21), @ No. 71 Georgia (Dec. 15)
LOSSES: No. 24 Nevada, @ No. 74 Vanderbilt (Dec. 17)
RECORD: 4-2
Quadrant 2 (Home vs. 31-75, Neutral vs. 50-100, Away vs. 76-135) WINS: None
LOSSES: @ No. 124 Stanford (Jan. 12)
RECORD: 0-1
Quadrant 3 (Home vs. 76-160, Neutral vs. 101-200, Away vs. 136-240)
WINS: vs. No. 93 Colorado (Jan. 5), @ No. 228 California (Jan. 9)
LOSSES: vs. No. 111 Utah (Jan. 3)
RECORD: 2-1
Quadrant 4 (Home vs. 161+, Neutral vs. 201+, Away vs. 241+) WINS: vs. No. 183 Omaha (Nov. 28), vs. No. 197 Texas Southern (Dec. 1), vs. No. 220 Long Beach State (Nov. 12), vs. No. 259 Cal State Fullerton (Nov. 6), vs. No. 308 McNeese State (Nov. 9)
LOSSES: vs. No. 180 Princeton (Dec. 29)
RECORD: 5-1
This résumé is perfectly average. There’s a lot of good, a lot of bad and plenty in between, and when you’re playing in a league that allows a little-to-no margin for error, that can’t be the case.
So the question, of course, has to be, how does ASU get back on the right side of the postseason cut-off?
For now, let’s assume the Sun Devils aren’t going to win the Pac-12 tournament and therefore need to earn an at-large selection in order to play in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments for the first time since the early 1980s.
First off, stop splitting weekends. This has been the Sun Devils’ storyline since the beginning of last season when it comes to conference play, and we’ve already seen it twice this year. So often, ASU will take on a pair of schools in a given weekend, with one resulting in a confidence-building win, and the other a head-scratching loss. The net result is minimal forward progress at best.
This weekend, the former was California. Sure, the Sun Devils didn’t look great in Berkeley, and the Golden Bears are the Pac-12’s worst team by a significant margin, but to win by double-digits on the road in conference is nothing at which to scoff. Beating Cal by 14 felt like the building of some momentum.
But of course, momentum in Pac-12 play and ASU basketball don’t mix well. The Sun Devils’ longest conference win streak in the Bobby Hurley era is # games. They’ve swept just one weekend set of contests — a pair of home tilts against UCLA and USC in 2017-18.
Enter Stanford. The Cardinal, a then sub-.500 team desperate to turn things around, simply outplayed ASU Saturday in Palo Alto. As a result, the narrative remained the same.
If that continues to be the case, the Sun Devils won’t even sniff the big dance. An ASU team that goes 9-9 in the Pac-12 might not even be considered for an at-large bid.
In all reality, though, the Sun Devils can sweep Oregon State and Oregon this Thursday and Saturday. The best versions of ASU this season are better than anything either the Beavers or Ducks have shown to date.
But then again, they also should have done the same this past week in the Bay Area. Stanford and California comprise the worst on-paper geographic pairing of teams the Pac-12 has to offer.
And that’s the problem, right now. As was mentioned in a previous article, the largest number of losses ASU can probably afford in the Pac-12, in order to still be in the at-large conversation, is somewhere around seven. There was a little more room for error at the outset of the conference slate, but two losses outside the NET Top 100 will change that. With the long-term goal of 12-6 or 11-7 in mind, 2-2 isn’t a horrific start. It can certainly be overcome.
The issue is, when you can’t afford more than six or seven losses, taking two to teams you probably “should have” beaten has a two-fold negative effect.
On one hand, it forces you to go out and win that many more games in which you wouldn’t be nearly as favored, and on another, it even further tightens your window for error, as those bad losses set you back more than a loss to, say, Arizona or Washington would.
So, in summary, the Sun Devils entered Pac-12 play a step ahead of the rest of their league and therefore possessed the comfortability that fact brings. Now, they’re just like any other team in this conference — playing catch-up.
This league is so incredibly wide-open that, sure, ASU could go 9-9 and win the conference tournament and it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise. But if the Sun Devils want to enter the third week of March not needing to capture a title they’ve never held — that of Pac-12 tournament champions — it likely starts with a home sweep this weekend.
