Bienvenidos a Miami

Near the end of his press conference today, Herb Sendek looked out on the gathered media and asked a simple question.

“So,  how many of you are going to Miami?”

While we all shuffled and looked at each other, one hand immediately shot up to the right of the stage.

It was Jeff Pendergraph.

Could you blame him for being so excited?

As if it wasn’t torturous enough trying to figure out exactly where the Sun Devils might be seeded, who their opponent might be and where they may be headed for their 1st round game, CBS decided until the VERY LAST MATCHUP to unveil Arizona State as a tournament participant.

However, when it finally came across, the verdict was in: the Sun Devils earned a respectible 6-seed in the South Region and will take on the Atlantic-10 Tournament champion Temple Owls.

I’m gonna need a little bit of time to gather all sorts of good info on the Owls, but on first instinct, this is what I know about Temple:

-Dionte Christmas is an absolute stud. If you watched any of the A-14 Tournament, you saw his 20-point effort that helped them knock off frontrunner Xavier and then his monstrous 29-point game that helped the Owls beat Duquesne and claim their 2nd straight conference title. However, when the offense goes through him, he takes a ton of shots. Against Duquesne, where he was forced to take over, he took 24 of Temple’s 59 shots. He’s pretty deadly accurate and could create a matchup problem if his shots start falling.

-ASU and Temple have met five previous times and the Sun Devils are 4-1 in the series. The teams most recently met in a home-and-home series in 03-04 and 04-05. The Devils won both of those games, one of which was played at what was then called America West Arena.

-Fran Dunphy really is a tremendous coach. There was definitely a bit of hesitation a three years ago when he took over for the legendary John Chaney, but he’s definitely won over the Temple faithful with his enthusiasm for the game and his intricate knowledge of basketball. Dunphy is the first person to have held two head coaching positions in Philadelphia’s Big 5, as was the head man at Penn from 1989-2006 befire succeeding Chaney.

Even though it’s inappropriate to look ahead when one bad stretch of basketball can end a season, we’d be remiss to not look at the other side of the Devils pod. Joining the Devils and Owls in Miami will be the Syracuse Orange and the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks.

We’ll get more in depth later. For now, bask in the glory and grab your dancing shoes, because for the first time since 2003, the season rolls on.

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