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An Honor Most Deserved - Sendek is the Coach of the Year
I can tell you exactly where I was on April1, 2006.
It was, as usual, a bright, sunny day in Tempe. I was at my old rental house on Balboa Drive with two of my roommates enjoying a lazy Saturday. It was halftime between the Florida Gators and George Mason Patriots at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, where the eventual national champions led the spunky 11-seed from Virginia 31-26.
In the larger picture, the Arizona State Sun Devils were about three weeks removed from the firing of head coach Rob Evans after yet another unremarkable season. Lisa Love was just under a year into her tenure at ASU and had yet to make a move such as this, so we were all a little curious as to what direction she’d take in the hiring of the new bench boss at Wells Fargo Arena.
The rumors during those 20 days got a little bit out of control. At one point, Jamie Dixon was supposedly on a plane from Pittsburgh to Phoenix to accept the job. Then there was the outrageously overhyped non-interest the Sun Devils had with Bobby Knight. Some of the stuff being tossed about was unbelievable, if not downright ridiculous.
Back to that April Fool’s Day. I had just walked into my kitchen to make lunch when the studio crew mentioned that Seth Davis had breaking news to share. My ears perked up, like any good student journalist’s or those of any college basketball fan should at the time. I reached up into the cabinet to grab a plate to put my food on, which I assume at the time, considering my eating habits as a college junior, was a Hot Pocket.
“Sources are now confirming to me right now that N.C. State head coach Herb Sendek will be leaving Raleigh to take the vacant position at Arizona State,” Davis said.
R.I.P., Plate, 2004-2006. We hardly got to know each other before the thing shattered on the tile floor.
The floodgates were open. Arizona State, if the Davis report was true, had just scored one of the biggest coups in college basketball, stealing a coach from the ACC who had worn out his welcome in North Carolina, fairly or unfairly as it had been.
Oh, how little we knew about what Sendek would do to this program in four short years, which culminated (again) yesterday when Unkie Herb was named the 2010 Pac-10 Coach of the Year.
There are two moments that stick in my craw as the one where I knew Sendek, despite the cries from critics at N.C. State that he’d never lead us to anything significant, would be the guy to take the program from stagnation to prominence.
The first happened seven months after the plate-shattering incident in the media room underneath WFA. That week represented the end and the beginning of two ASU coaching careers - at the time, my longtime friend and colleague Sam Eshelman and I were hosting the Sun Devil Power Hour on The Fan AM 1060. That week, we had one-on-one interviews established with both Sendek and Dirk Koetter.
Koetter’s interview came first. It came just after that horrid 24-12 home loss to UCLA. We were talking to who we all assumed was a defeated man who wouldn’t be back for 2007. Koetter was combative yet sullen throughout the entire interview.
The next day, we sat down with Sendek after one of his last practices before the Sun Devils’ season opener with Northern Arizona. What we didn’t get from Dirk was exactly what we got from Herb - optimism, enthusiasm and drive.
Within two minutes of talking to him, I got the feeling that even if 2006-07 was a down year for ASU (and, at 8-22, it certainly was), Herb already had the mindset to put this team on the map. He frequently talked about doing things the right way: building through recruiting, coaching up the players who were still in the system and, most importantly, turning Wells Fargo Arena into a real home court advantage.
I fell in man love immediately. I won’t even lie. I walked away from that interview and told Sam, “This is the guy. People are going to LOVE Herb Sendek.”
I like when I’m right.
The other moment that I knew Herb Sendek was taking this program in the right direction was with 13:16 left in what ended up being a 66-61 loss to Washington on February 1, 2007, dropping the Devils to 0-10 in conference play. At that point in the game, Antwi Atuahene took a loose ball foul, a horrid call on all accounts. It was a hustle play that led to incidental contact.
Sendek flipped out. Referee Michael Reed gave Sendek a technical foul. The crowd, 7,164 strong, went absolutely wild. Instead of retreating to the sideline, Herb incited them. He waved his arms around wildly, getting an already incensed crowd whipped into an all-out frenzy.
Reed gave him a second technical foul and ejected Herb from the game. The partisan Sun Devil crowd was now at full throat. The referee said after the game that he had kicked Sendek out for “violating rule 1096: inciting an undesirable response from the crowd after he had been asked not to do that.”
Too bad Sendek didn’t stop. Herb slowly made his way down the short walk from the Sun Devil bench to the tunnel, spinning around in his wing tips, slinging his arms in the air, like the kids say, as if he just didn’t care.
The clip became a YouTube phenomenon and was even played on the Jumbotron at WFA to pump the crowd up through the rest of the year. That was game, set and match. Sendek was here to stay and things in Tempe weren’t going to be the same.
Flash forward through the next three seasons of multiple wins against Arizona in Tempe AND Tucson, a run to the NIT Quarterfinals in just his second year, the program’s first appearance in the Pac-10 championship and a second round appearance in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years.
This year, though, the expectations were down. The Sporting News even ranked the Sun Devils 9th in their preseason magazine. And who could blame them? All ASU did was lose James Harden, their superstar, and Jeff Pendergraph, their vocal and emotional leader for four years, to the NBA Draft.
Too bad for the rest of the Pacific-10 Conference that it’s not Sendek’s M.O. to roll over when the odds are against him. If that were the case, he would have never taken the job at Arizona State in the first place.
Instead, Sendek seized a down year in the conference to coach up players like Ty Abbott, Eric Boateng, Rihards Kuksiks, integrate freshmen like Trent Lockett and lean on the guy who has been with him since the start, Derek Glasser, to 22 wins and the highest finish for ASU in the Pac-10 since 1981.
Think about that for a second. The year after the best season for Arizona State in decades, Sendek one-upped himself.
I’m not thinking about this honor as just a coach of the year recognition. For those of us in Tempe, Herb Sendek taking home this award in 2010 is more of a career achievement award than anything else.
The best part is that it’s nowhere close to over.
Five Things to Stew About
1 - Amidst the excitement of Herb Sendek being named Coach of the Year is the fact that Ty Abbott was selected to the Pac-10’s 1st team and Trent Lockett is a member of the conference All-Freshman team. For Abbott the honor is a culmination of a season which saw Ty transition from one of the most maddeningly inconsistent players in years at Arizona State into one of the most dynamic and indispensible players in this rotation. As for Lockett, he had to come into Tempe for his freshman season in the shadow of the potential star of local standout Demetrius Walker and did so with flying colors. His play early in the non-conference season helped ASU keep their heads above water against stiff competition and earned his way into the starting lineup once conference play rolled around.
2 - If you aren’t already, you should be glued to the remaining mid-major conference tournaments going on throughout college basketball this week. As you all know, the Sun Devils sit squarely on the bubble and precariously on the edge of most analyst’s “Last Four In/First Four Out” lists. Luckily for ASU and other bubble teams, though, most of those conference tourneys have gone the way of the favorites and keeping at-large berths open for power conference teams who are trying to sneak in. Just over the weekend, teams like Wichita State, Virginia Commonwealth, Fairfield and William & Mary all did their due and lost conference title games to mid-major teams that would most likely garner an at-large bid to the Big Dance even if they lost their conference title game. Now, as most of you know, I’m as big an advocate for small-conference basketball as anyone, but with a potential at-large berth for the Devils on the line with each of those games, I say GO FAVORITES! Some of you might be worried that Saint Mary’s win over Gonzaga last night in the WCC final might affect the bubble. It won’t; both teams were in regardless of the outcome last night. Another one is taking place tonight as Butler takes on Wright State the Horizon League final. Butler is in with or without a win tonight, but Wright State isn’t. We’ll be also interested to keep a keen eye on the Atlantic 10 tournament as well. I’ll be Tweeting pertinent information about games across the nation with impact on Arizona State and other bubble teams throughout the week. Look for the #bubblewatch hashtag.
3 - If former Florida Gators superstar quarterback Tim Tebow finds any success in the NFL as a signal caller, he might have Arizona State to thank in part. As the two-time national champion gets ready for his Pro Day and the NFL Draft in April, Tebow has been working with several coaches on his mechanics and skill set to try and transform himself into a more prototypical NFL-style quarterback. One of the coaches he has been working with, according to ESPN, is Sun Devils offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone. Mazzone’s pedigree for coaching up college talent to succeed at the next level includes former NC State Wolfpack star and current San Diego Chargers starter Philip Rivers. Rivers, if you remember, also had to go through some minor mechanical changes to his game before entering the 2004 draft. So, if Tebow defies the odds and becomes a solid NFL passer, would it be so much to ask to mix a little pitchfork in with his gator chomps?
4 - It’s a little bit of an odd feeling, going into the start of this week’s Pac-10 Women’s Tournament, knowing that Arizona State probably will need to win the entire thing to ensure a berth in the NCAA Tournament. But, when the Devils tip off with California in the 4/5 game at noon on Friday at the Galen Center, that will be the case. Regardless, we should be paying special attention to this team for one reason other than winning and losing - the careers of Danielle Orsillo, Dymond Simon, Gabby Fage and Kayli Murphy will be coming to an end soon enough. It wasn’t the most overwhelming of recruiting classes over the course of Charli Turner-Thorne’s career, but I don’t think there’s been a class of better people or hungrier athletes than this one. In this case, focusing specifically on Orsillo, she’ll be a player that will be irreplaceable. Between her being tough as nails attitude and overwhelming enthusiasm on and off the court, Orsillo will be someone who’s truly missed around these parts. To continue this column’s trail of reminiscing, the night Arizona State got bounced from the 2007 NCAA Tournament in the Elite Eight, the team flew home and arrived in Tempe around 2:00 AM. A gang of about five of us rabid Sun Devil fans descended on a remote corner of Sky Harbor International Airport to give the ladies a rousing welcome home. The day after, both Orsillo and Reagan Pariseau passed along notes about how much they appreciated being welcomed home like that. Neither had to go out of their way to say thank you, but I think it speaks volumes about their characters to do so.
5 - Don’t look now, but ASU women’s water polo is making a move. The Devils won their sixth straight game on Sunday in a 17-6 drubbing of top-ranked Pomona-Pitzer in a game in which eleven different players on the team notched a tally. Arizona State sits at #6 in the nation heading into their conference opener with UCLA on March 13.
Sun Devil of the Week
Paging Eric Boateng to the floor. I want to know if Boat has been holding out on us for his entire career, because his epic 16 point/14 rebound/4 block Senior Day performance against UCLA was one of the finest days of basketball I’ve ever seen.
I constantly had to make sure I wasn’t watching old tape of Ike Diogu or Jeff Pendergraph. Once I finally accepted that it was Eric, I couldn’t get my jaw off the ground. I implore Boateng not to stop - we need that kind of intensity come Thursday in Los Angeles.
There are a select few things that will ever make me turn off an Arizona State Sun Devils game of any type.
Most of them are out of my control - maybe the fire alarm goes off where I’m at…threat of nuclear holocaust…Lindsey Vonn…are a select few.
However, the one other thing that could ever drive me to turn off a game early is when the disparity between talent and success is so great that I have better things to do with my time than watch one team get run out of the gym.
That’s exactly why I didn’t watch the last five minute of this past Saturday’s Arizona State/California game.
I’m admitting it. I turned it off. I couldn’t bear to watch the Sun Devils get trampled. I couldn’t stand the thought of Cal fans rushing the floor to celebrate a Pac-10 title. I didn’t want to see this team once again come up a few steps short of an improbable and first conference title.
I don’t think that makes me any less of a fan. It was just too much to take for the second consecutive year.
Nearly a year ago to the date, I sat at the Four Peaks Brewery on a Thursday night with my best friends to take in the 2009 Pac-10 Game of the Year. That game between the Sun Devils and Washington Huskies in Seattle lived up to all the billing. It was a nip-and-tuck, up and down game that took overtime and a heroic effort from Isaiah Thomas to quell the scrappy Devils and put them down.
Two days later, we watched Taylor Rochestie break our hearts, but that’s a different story.
The similarities between that loss to Washington and Saturday’s defeat at the hands of the Golden Bears have striking similarities. Both times, each team came in with their sights set on the regular season conference title and the #1 seed in the Pac-10 tournament. The Devils were not far removed either time from an emotionally draining and hard fought win over the Arizona Wildcats.
Both games went back and forth at a frenetic pace; if you weren’t running, you weren’t on the floor. The Huskies and Sun Devils and, subsequently, the Bears and Sun Devils played with reckless abandon.
Both times, the game went into the half with a one-point lead; the Huskies last year, the Devils this year.
And that’s where the comparisons maddeningly end. All of a sudden, coming out of the halftime break, Arizona State had no mojo. No energy.
Nothing.
This is why I’m more frustrated over the ASU loss this year over the game in Seattle last season. Call it a talent disparity. Call it fatigue after having to go down to the wire with both Arizona and Stanford in their last two games.
Call it whatever you want. I call it a team that came out without realizing the implications of that 2nd half on their tournament chances - a 16-point second half effort that will go down as one of the most forgettable yet memorable stretches in recent memory.
The ramifications of losing this game are easy to fathom. Last year, the loss to Washington didn’t do anything to damage ASU’s tournament prospects. We all know how weak the Pac-10 is this season and that, more than likely, only the winner of the Pac-10 Tournament will get a ticket to the Big Dance.
Back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament still aren’t out of this group’s reach. They’ll still end up with a good seed and good draw in the first round at Staples Center in a few weeks. However, after this loss, there’s no wiggle room. Saturday’s game was about much more than the throne atop this league; with the win, Cal made a statement as the only team in the league that should be considered for an at-large bid should they get bounced in the conference tournament.
Don’t sell that fact short because it leaves Arizona State and the other 7 post-season eligible teams in the Pac-10 in a position where they must win the tournament to go dancing.
So now the key is to get back on the horse. The Devils finish with two winnable games and can still put themselves into a great position to carry momentum into a run through Los Angeles. Let us not forget that even after last year’s disastrous weekend in Washington, the Devils came within a few minutes of a Pac-10 Conference Tournament title.
Hopefully, that’s another parallel we can draw once that bridge is crossed.
Three Things on the Bright Side
Usually, in this part of the column, we stew about things. I think we’ve stewed enough for one week because, inherently, the sun always comes up the next day (unless you live in Washington, DC, where I don’t think we’ve seen the sun since Halloween).
1 - There’s no doubt that here on Pitchfork Nation, we’ve had our share of fun and laughs at the expense of Eric Boateng. OK, so maybe the entire fan base in Tempe has had more than their share. However, there’s no doubt that what Boat pulled off last Thursday in Palo Alto should go down as one of the greatest single game performances in Arizona State’s long basketball history. When you start rolling like Boateng did, the position he plays in the low post makes it easy to lose track of just how many shots a big man is sinking in a row. It’s easier, for instance, to notice a perfect double-digit shooting day when a guy like Christian Laettner is doing it. What Boateng did in the win over Stanford was remarkable and, with all due respect, totally out of character, but it’s something I’m going to remember forever. Not everyone goes 11-for-11 in a college basketball game. James Harden didn’t do it. Ike Diogu didn’t do it. Neither did Fat Lever, Byron Scott and every other great Sun Devil. Eric Boateng did. However, of course, in classic Eric fashion, the 11th straight shot he hit ended with an and-1. He nearly air-balled the free throw. We won’t hold that against you, Boat.
2 - It’s very odd to be sitting here right now and thinking about an NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament without Arizona State as a participant. However, you have to admire the scrappiness that Charli’s bunch has shown down the stretch as they jockey for an at-large bid. As expected, the Devils were rolled by one of the best teams in the game in Stanford, but the other two games in their last three have been gritty, come from behind wins over Arizona and California on Senior Day. The Cal win was especially poignant, considering the performance Danielle Orsillo turned in during her last performance at Wells Fargo Arena. Right now, Charlie Creme doesn’t have ASU in his latest round of Women’s Bracketology, and sitting starkly in 5th in the Pac-10 could be reason for most teams to pack it in and play out the string. Never this team, though, and that’s something to admire.
3 - Other schools that boast football factories and swaths of talent for the NFL might get more national attention, but I have four words for them: I’m on a horse.
Sun Devil of the Week
Eric Boateng. Enough said.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
I’ll just post the link instead of pasting the whole text of it here, but you should read the article I just wrote this morning about the merging of Gatsby and Foursquare, two of the newest and most popular entries into the world of social networking. The gist: be careful with what you’re putting out there.
Also, for those of you who spent hours and took years off your life guzzling Cherry Pepsi and downing sliders like it was your job…was I the only one?…this one’s for you. Long live Dave’s Doghouse!
Follow Justin on Twitter, be his friend on Facebook and visit his personal website at JustinKarp.net. You can read his weekly musings on all things Arizona State every Tuesday on Pitchfork Nation and Fanster.com.
The voices in my head are talking…and they’re saying…expansion again?
As George Costanza so eloquently puts it in the “Virgin” episode of Seinfeld: “Every time I think I’m out…they pull me back in!”
And so, as OK Go sings in the video above, here it goes again.
Trust me, I appreciate and welcome all the phone calls, text messages, e-mails, tweets, carrier pigeons and other forms of communication used to get my thoughts on the most recent round of bloviating about Pac-10 expansion.
Many of you longtime followers of Pitchfork Nation might remember the article I posted last July, which I wrote during a dreadfully boring Arizona Diamondbacks 4-3 win over San Diego at Chase Field. It generated a huge groundswell - we got relinked by Ted Miller on ESPN.com, generated over 5,000 hits to the site and hosted one of the most spirited comment debates in the history of the site.
I was hoping that would leave well enough alone and we wouldn’t have to talk about this again for…oh, I don’t know…another year or so.
Yet, the calendar on the wall says we’re only six months removed from when I write about how I opposed expanding the Pac-10 to a dozen teams. For those of you hoping that I may have changed my stance since then, you’ll be disappointed, because those six months have not thawed my opposition.
However, the tone of these talks certainly is different than it was last summer, when the general consensus was that the Utah teams, Boise State, San Diego State and maybe a few other stragglers were the supposed prime candidates to create a West Coast mega-conference. Since then, the Big Ten has gone all apocalyptic on the situation and publicly stated, unlike the Pac-10, that they are actively pursuing a 12th team.
The names for that league have ranged from Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Notre Dame (HAH!), Texas, Iowa State, Missouri and several others.
Now, the Pac-10 is trying to get in on the party of bringing down the Big 12 only 15 years after it was formed, with the latest round of rumors saying that the conference may have its sights set on Texas and Colorado among the other schools named earlier.
In theory, that would be wonderful. Forget Provo and Salt Lake City - from a revenue generating and fan attention standpoint, moving the Pac-10 into the Denver and Austin markets, though as geographically confusing as having the Arizona Cardinals playing in the NFC East, would be a huge boon.
Those are areas that not only love their football but they love all of their sports, from basketball to baseball to the other non-revenue generating sports. They have huge followings, giant alumni bases, famous ex-athletes and plenty of name recognition. For anyone else who made the trip to Colorado in 2006, we remember how much fun the atmosphere was at Folsom Field even in a season when the Buffaloes were god awful.
And Texas, well, you fill in the blanks.
Plus, think of the tremendous rivalries that could be generated on a yearly basis? Arizona State and Texas, two perennially tremendous baseball programs, would slug it out a guaranteed three times a season. USC and the Longhorns could work into a nice little football frenzy. Colorado could use games with the Washington and Oregon schools to gain a stronger foothold in the Pacific Northwest.
Getting all hot and bothered yet about the Longhorns and Buffaloes?
It still makes as little sense logically as it did when we were talking about Utah and BYU moving in, despite Texas and Colorado clearly having more national prestige than those two.
Let’s get one thing out of the way really quickly - leaving the Big 12 for the Pac-10 would lead to a short-term financial crisis for both of those schools.
With all due to respect to San Jose State fans, even they’ll readily admit that WAC money is small potatoes when compared to the revenue sharing that goes on in the Big 12. According to the Denver Post, any team that decided to bolt the conference must give two years notice to the home office and therefore forfeit half of their yearly payout from that revenue sharing pot.
That, hypothetically, equates to either Texas or Colorado giving up a whopping year and a half of free money over a three year span before joining the Pac-10. Think about that for a second - how would you like to work for three years but only be paid half of your three-year salary over that span?
Both of those schools better have a Scrooge McDuck style (and yes, I know that’s two Duck Tales references in two weeks) vault full of money to get through that. Though I’m sure their endowments are great and they’d be able to ride through that three years storm of stifled revenue, it would be up to those schools to decide whether or not the end justifies the means.
Beyond money, there are all those other nagging subjects to think about.
For instance, let’s talk about scheduling again. Certainly the ACC and Big 12 put on stirring, dramatic conference championship games in 2009, but for both leagues, they were their first compelling and, frankly, watchable title games in at least the last half-decade.
Plus, both of those leagues don’t play the complete round robin in football that the Pac-10 does. Before 2005, then the NCAA instituted the mandatory 12th game, Pac-10 teams still missed one of their counterparts every year. Since then, when the conference added a 9th league game to the slate, everyone has played everyone every single year.
That’s the way to determine a conference champion - not with some gimmicky made-for-national-TV-but-only-fans-in-your-region-are-watching-it conference title game. When everyone plays everyone, you determine a clear king of the hill. What more, it cuts out any debate on whether a team has earned a lofty conference record despite, for instance, not playing one of the top two teams in the league.
The same thing goes for basketball, baseball and other sports. The Pac-10 still sets the benchmark for basketball scheduling where, in a tidy, 18 game slate, everyone gets a home and road game against everyone else even before the conference tournament. What more could you want now? Dividing into two divisions would lead to the kind of unbalanced schedule leagues like the Big East and Big 12 currently operate under.
Speaking of dividing into divisions, I still don’t see how you could make it work. Fans of Oklahoma and Nebraska from the Big 8 days still lament the fact that the two bitter rivals don’t play in the same division anymore and therefore don’t play every year.
While I’m sure the Pac-10 would go to great lengths to ensure existing natural rivals would get to play each other every season, it still just wouldn’t sit well with me or potentially swaths of fans that, say, Arizona and ASU would be in separate divisions. Repeat the same for USC/UCLA, Oregon/Oregon State, Stanford/California and Washington/Washington State.
Thus enters why taking BYU and Utah in made slightly more sense since they’re already natural rivals. When you talk about Texas moving to the Pac-10, you force them to give up one of their non-conference games every year to play the Red River Shootout, easily their most lucrative and popular game of the season. Colorado already plays an OOC game every year with Colorado State, but they also share a fierce yearly dual with the Nebraska Cornhuskers which, if they wanted to keep it, they’d have to give up a non-conference game of their own.
Once again, though, I find myself slipping into the trap of focusing on football when we’re talking about dozens of other programs that would have to make the shift and adjustment.
Jack Kent Cooke, the enigmatic former owner of the Los Angeles Kings and, more famously, the Washington Redskins said it best.
“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
Five Things to Stew About
1 - I think it’s an understatement to say that the entire Sun Devil community is in mourning over the passing of Bill Kajikawa yesterday. When you think about Sun Devil sports over the course of history, only a few names come up on everyone’s tongue. Those include men like Bruce Snyder, Frank Kush, Ned Wulk and, of course, Kajikawa. His life around ASU athletics spanned 41 years of coaching, two team nicknames and three different sports. He gave up time to serve his country in World War II and returned to earn his master’s degree in Tempe afterwards, all while coaching freshman football and basketball. Beyond that, Kajikawa was an enormous humanitarian, giving countless hours to volunteer and service projects throughout the Valley. If there were a truer Sun Devil in every sense of the word and spirit, it was Bill and he’ll be sorely missed and widely revered for generations. Luckily, ASU has his daughter, Dr. Christine Wilkinson, around to carry his ASU spirit and legend around.
2 - To say that Arizona State’s sweep of the Oregon schools last weekend in Tempe saved the Devils tournament chances is an understatement. While most of the pundits around America peg the Pac-10 as a one-bid league deep into February, the Sun Devils two wins kept them in 2nd place and within arm’s reach of the program’s first (and equally most improbable) regular season conference title. However, the work is not over. Considering that previous fact, it’s pivotal that Arizona State wins at least three of their final five games starting with this Sunday’s game against Arizona in Tucson. The Sun Devils, much like every other team in the Pac-10, must do everything they possibly can to improve their tournament resume to the standard that the selection committee would even consider them for an at-large bid at this point. While wins over the likes of UCLA and Stanford might not make waves, if the Devils can grab wins over California and USC down the stretch, their public image can go nowhere but up in the eyes of the NCAA.
3 - Meanwhile, Charli Turner-Thorne needs to find a way to keep her team energized on the back end of their weekly two game sets or else they’ll find themselves in deep trouble come Selection Monday. Since sweeping the Oregon schools a month ago, the Devils have dropped one of the two games in each weekend set. Their last two have been nail biting, single-digit losses to Oregon and Washington State (which I declared the worst loss of the CTT era) which won’t do the Devils any favors in a rare season when they find themselves on the bubble and in 6th in the Pac-10.
4 - Never before have I been so excited for a team like Northern Illinois to make a trip to the desert, but can we PLEASE get baseball season underway? These guys are clearly ready to get back on the diamond and play for something. Credit must be given to Tim Esmay and his new coaching staff who have me totally convinced that the entire Pat Murphy saga really didn’t do anything to fracture the clubhouse or throw them into a tizzy. Frankly, Murphy had these players so well disciplined year in and year out that distractions (save the staged fight incident) never made the most dramatic impact on this team. We won’t truly know how much the switch has impacted them until they start playing though, but I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I’m ready to see Josh Spence deal again.
5 - Finally, let’s give some love to a team that doesn’t get nearly enough credit. After a slow start in the standings column, at least, the 25th ranked Sun Devil Gymnastics team came through on Saturday with a big time win over #24 Washington. Mary Atkinson and Stephanie Hangartner came through to finish 1-2 in the all-around and currently carry a #18 national ranking in the bars, led last week by Francesca Mercurio and Kahoku Palafox. The Gym Devils head home for a meet with Stanford on Friday.
Sun Devil of the Week
Let’s not even waste time - the Sun Devils wouldn’t have knocked off the Beavers and Ducks this past weekend for two vital conference wins without Ty Abbott.
While Derek Glasser and Jerren Shipp paced the Devils on the scoreboard in Thursday’s 56-46 slog-it-out win over Oregon State, Abbott’s 9-and-9 all around performance kept the Sun Devils at an arm’s reach throughout the evening.
Two nights later with the Ducks at WFA, Ty nailed five three pointers to help ASU rally from behind to grab a 10-point win. Three of those treys came during a 12-0 second half Devils run where ASU completely opened the floodgates.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
Every four years, the Winter Olympics come around and I become dead to the world as I obsess over all things ice hockey.
Most of you know that as strange as it is for a kid from California and Arizona, I totally obsess over the NHL and when the league shuts down for two weeks to send its players to the Olympics, I go berserk. Three games a day for a week starting today? Yes, please!
The prohibitive favorites this year are Canada and Russia and I’ll give the home standing team the edge for gold based on Russia’s lack of defensive depth. Sure, the Russians can score the pants off anyone in the world (yesterday’s practice include a line combo of Alex Semin, Alex Ovechkin and Pavel Datsyuk) but I worry about their ability to slow down an equally potent Canadian attack.
The team who has the best chance to sneak up and steal gold or silver from those two is Sweden, the defending gold medalist. I believe that, as usual, Finland will underachieve coming off their silver medal in 2006 in Torino.
The United States will battle for bronze but may still struggle to even get that far because I worry about their secondary scoring. Sure, their top line, which includes Zach Parise and Paul Stastny, will pump out a ton of offense, but they’re going to need goals from guys like Joe Pavelski to advance deep into the tournament.
First off, I’d like to take the time to thank R.P. Cotta over at Inside Sparta for writing his rebuttal to last week’s Devil Blast and for a couple of you Spartan fans for making the effort to engage in dialogue. When I got no response from San Jose State fans over the first couple days after I published the column, I got worried that no one really even cared enough to respond.
Now, at least I know there are SJSU fans out there that care enough about their program who will stand up for it. Spartan fans, those are your true best fans.
Anger is often misplaced and it’s directed at an easy target. Unfortunately for the Spartans, the bullseye was obviously right on their back. Deserved? Most likely. Regardless of justification, Tom Bowen and the San Jose State Spartans did pull a low move by canceling not one, but two long scheduled games - games they had a better shot at winning than ones against Alabama and Wisconsin - in favor of the paycheck and the loss.
However, I’m going to take this space today to backtrack just a little bit. I’ll admit that while my problem and indignation at San Jose State for leaving Arizona State in a lurch for 2010 is in no way lessened, my overall problem isn’t with the Spartans or their fan base.
My problem is with the atmosphere under which the idea of taking paydays to lose in general.
Every NCAA school in America has been hit by this horrid economy we currently live under. Money is tight at every academic institution - despite the fact that tuition continues to skyrocket, deficits are abound. Arizona State isn’t immune - it took private donors to keep swimming & diving and the Devils’ storied wrestling program afloat and men’s tennis went away entirely.
Choices must be made to keep your head above water on a personal and organizational level. I understand that.
On San Jose State’s level, it still doesn’t change the fact that they did, in fact, put the Arizona State athletic department in an almost untenable position by breaking their contract for the date with Wisconsin just a year before the scheduled game.
I understand that the series has been lopsided in favor of ASU in this series with San Jose State. But, seriously, look me in the eye and tell me the chances of winning in Madison are going to be greater than winning in Tempe.
One commenter made reference to the idea that ASU “had the time” to replace the game with another FBS opponent. Yes, maybe in terms of calendar time, they did. However, I can assure you that within the first 48 hours after the schedule change, one person with good knowledge of the situation informed me that Arizona State had two teams to make a deal with to fill the game. Both could not be attained.
Jeff Metcalfe later named four teams - Nevada, Kansas State, South Florida and Cincinnati - with whom deals were close. They all couldn’t be done. Therefore, ASU had to convince Portland State to move their regularly scheduled game in the 2011 season opener to this coming season, leaving another gap in the schedule. Therefore, ASU is now in the same position once again - having to cobble together an 11th hour deal to fill a spot.
Therefore, San Jose State’s move to buy themselves out not only set Arizona State back in 2010, the domino effect put the Devils in a still-present bind for 2011.
San Jose State fans should be as irritated as we are that we have to take on two FCS opponents in one season. There’s a distinction between the Bowl Subdivision and the Championship Subdivision for a reason. It’s why the NCAA has the rule about only counting one win per season against lower division opponents.
While I harbor no ill will toward Northern Arizona or Portland State (or the two SJSU will take on in 2010), I simply don’t think FBS opponents can take anything from playing them. It’s an absolute no-win situation for the FBS team - if they win, no one takes it seriously; it’s a throwaway game that they were supposed to win. However, if you’re like Michigan, Colorado, Duke, Virginia or any of the other teams that have lost to a lower division opponent in recent years, the loss is an indignity that is remembered forever.
Once again though, this idea isn’t San Jose State’s fault and I don’t levy any blame for the theory of scheduling payout games directly on them. ASU is just one of many teams to have this happen to and, while I say it should stop immediately, it never will.
Money talks. I could get up on a soapbox and expound all sorts of different ideas about how winning games brings more people to games, more attention and more money to the program. Just look at what happened to Arizona State between 2007 and 2009. As games were lost, attendance waned big time. The Sun Devils went from averaging just under 70,000 per game date when the team won 10 games. That turned into the half-empty Sun Devil Stadium we saw week in and week out last year.
That’s just not how athletic directors have been forced to think though. It’s widely known that at the great majority of athletic programs, football and men’s basketball are the only money makers. Therefore, if the money isn’t flowing through the gridiron the way they wish it would, coupled with the burden of one or two programs having to shoulder the financial load for at least a dozen others at that school, the athletic director has a serious problem.
Therein lies the vicious cycle of being a team like San Jose State, a program that boasts multiple conference titles but hasn’t taken home a crown since winning the Big West title in 1987. The moneymaking team in the athletic program doesn’t bring home enough bacon because they haven’t had much on-field success, so they’re forced to schedule big money games which usually end in a loss. But because of that, the losses pile up yet again, stifling and stunting on-field growth and…winning.
Does this give the Spartans a pass? No. But what I didn’t put into my previous column was that why I absolutely deplore the idea of breaking contracts for paycheck games, I also fully understand why they have to do it.
It certainly doesn’t make it right, however, to cut off your nose to spite your face. The system fails teams like SJSU.
If San Jose State really didn’t want to play ASU anymore because the Sun Devils have won eight straight in the series, that’s all well and good - just don’t use it as an excuse when the real reason is that the program did it for the money.
The thing that just irks me the most about the whole situation is the broken contract, because apparently, contracts, much like rules, are only made to be broken and ignored. Certainly, San Jose State had this option - at the hefty price of $250,000 - to break out of this contract they signed in 2005.
We know full well about this kind of thing in Arizona. It seems that ever since Anquan Boldin signed his extension and then Larry Fitzgerald got his hefty raise, all we’ve heard is how Boldin wants more money. Josh Cribbs, not a month ago, explicitly said that he would not come to camp unless he got his contract restructured…a deal that still had a year left on it.
I don’t know who, in fact, insisted on having the large buyout for San Jose State in this deal, but frankly, I wish it hadn’t been included in the first place.
Let me also say this, and take note because this doesn’t happen often: I did, in fact, take an unnecessary low blow at the SJSU program. I did grow up in the Bay Area and know how much the Spartans struggle to gain a foothold in a very, very polluted sports market with two other college football programs, two NFL teams, two MLB teams and an NBA and NHL franchise.
They’re overshadowed greatly by the two Pac-10 programs just up 280 and 880 and have for the past decade had to scratch and claw to get people into Spartan Stadium. That’s nothing that I should have poked fun at.
However, at the same time, attendance numbers don’t lie. If someone wants to help me out with exact numbers since SJSU’s media guide doesn’t list them, that’d be great, but common sense dictates that a program that struggled mightily to put people in the stands throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s saw strong numbers in 2006 (the New Mexico Bowl year) and the year after, but since then, my educated guess would be that average attendance has tapered since then because the team has struggled.
We know just as well in Phoenix that winning puts butts in seats. If the Coyotes had made the playoffs since 2002 (and hadn’t build their arena half way to Blythe, but a different story for a different day), maybe the team gets more than 4,000 per night and we don’t go through the drama we did last summer.
Winning creates a groundswell of support. Winning early generates excitement. Early paycheck games are a total buzz kill once that season opener comes around.
But once again, that problem is with the system. San Jose State just put Arizona State and Stanford into the situation where they were the poster boys for abandonment in the name of money. So, while I’m still beside myself that his entire situation happened, the entire blame doesn’t lie on SJSU in reality. It lies with the skewed economics that exist in this game that we all obsess over that allows these situations to transpire.
Follow Justin on Twitter, be his friend on Facebook and visit his personal website at JustinKarp.net. You can check out his weekly Devil Blast every Tuesday on Pitchfork Nation at Fanster.com.
UPDATE (2/12): Thanks to some keen eyes, many of you caught my error. I did get confused between SJSU dropping us for Wisconsin and not Alabama. I apologize for the error but still stand by my opinion.
An Open Letter to San Jose State University
To: Thomas Bowen, Athletic Director, San Jose State University
From: Justin Karp, PitchforkNation.com, angry Arizona State Sun Devil fan
Dear Mr. Bowen:
I hope this letter finds you well today.
Actually, I hope it didn’t. I hope you dropped your carton of milk directly on your big toe, your box of Cheerios consisted of nothing but bottom-of-the-box crumbs and your dog relieved himself all over the rug you JUST had steam cleaned.
If you can’t tell by now, I’m a little bit agitated with you and your program. Behind me, I have a legion of Arizona State Sun Devil fans (much like the “network” from those irritating Verizon ads) that I had to convince to keep their burning wooden stakes and crowbars at home.
We’re keeping it classy. You wouldn’t know much about that, would you, Thomas? Is it OK if I call you Thomas? No? Too bad.
If you haven’t checked the headlines down here in Arizona lately, and I’m sure you haven’t, the Sun Devils have had to totally scramble over the past year or so to schedule another non-conference game for the 2010 season because you decided that playing at Alabama Wisconsin for more than $1 million in fat “come to us and lose” cash was a much better idea than hanging onto a game against an opponent who you’ve played a lot in the past and is close enough for your boosters to travel to easily.
When you pulled this little stunt off, several people came to me and put their frustration very bluntly: “San Jose State screwed us.” I couldn’t put it better myself.
Now, instead of playing you guys, ASU has been forced to burden the indignity of having to play two FCS opponents in back to back weeks to start the 2010 season - one against Portland State and one against our friendly neighbors to the north, THE Northern Arizona University.
Since the NCAA has that pesky rule that only one win against a lower division opponent per season counts towards bowl eligibility, our Devils must now win 7 games just to be considered for the postseason. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like too big of a burden - we shouldn’t in theory have any problem disposing with Portland State or the ‘Jacks, but it’s the principle of the thing that we’re dealing with.
On your personal web page, you describe your mission at San Jose State as building a “culture of champions.”
Methinks that sending your football team to play the defending national champions on their home turf on the day they raise a banner celebrating said national championship isn’t the best thing to put your players into a championship mindset.
Forget for a moment when you and your program did to put Arizona State into a corner - think about how what you did embodies all that’s wrong with college football these days.
Here’s the skinny - only about 8-10 teams per season in any given year enter their campaign with a legitimate shot at winning a national title. About 10 more might be able to put up a lengthy challenge for a conference title. 30 more will scrape and battle for second-tier bowl bids. Maybe about 10 more will go into the final week of the season needing the almighty sixth win.
Then there’s the group that your program belongs to, Thomas. Save me the babble about your rollicking trip to the New Mexico Bowl, which was your first postseason trip since, I believe, Eisenhower was in office. The Spartans are, year in and year out, a downtrodden, peon program which is the 3rd most popular college football team in San Jose. And before you argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I grew up in Santa Clara, 20 miles away from Spartan Stadium, and I went to more Stanford and Cal games during high school than I did Spartan games in my entire life.
Worse yet, moves like the Alabama Wisconsin stunt do nothing more than reinforce the idea that your program is bottom-of-the-barrel. I’m thrilled that this beat down you’ll take from the Crimson Tide Badgers will pay the athletic costs at SJSU for a while, but at the expense of what? Your biggest money making sport, football, will continue to lose because the program does not put its players in a position to gain confidence and win games.
Doesn’t it make more sense to take your team to Tempe, engage in what just might be a competitive football game? Or to truck your entire cadre to Tuscaloosa Madison, get waxed 65-3 and take home a certified check?
It’s up to you. I’m not an AD, so maybe I don’t understand. What I do understand is that thanks to you, Arizona State’s schedule is weaker, our players have to do more work to get to a bowl game that your program won’t even sniff in 2010 and you’ve only reinforced the idea that San Jose State, a program which almost had to move down to Division I-AA because you can’t draw people to your games, is a joke of a college football program.
I said it back then and I’ll say it again - I don’t ever want to see your Spartans on Arizona State’s athletic calendar again.
I hope you have a fantastic day.
Sincerely,
Justin Karp
Five Things to Stew About
1) As remarkable as it sounds, it’s still an actual statistical probability that every team in the artist formerly known as the West Coast’s Premier Basketball ConferenceTM could finish 9-9. After last week’s split in Washington, it looks more and more like that’s where the Sun Devils will end up this season. After a solid win in Pullman, a place where last year’s team was stunningly upset on a Taylor Rochestie buzzer-beater, the Devils went out and absolutely blew it in Seattle. Ironically, Saturday’s game had first-place ramifications for the second consecutive year, but this time around, ASU didn’t even put up a fight and that’s disappointing. It’s also, sadly, expected - Washington outclassed and stayed cooler than the Devils when they found themselves in an early shooting hole. The Huskies were able to emerge from a shaky first few minutes, while the Sun Devils still only had 6 points at the under-8 media time out.
2) I do want to finally give kudos to Herb Sendek, however, for doing what he does best. Much like he did in 2006 when his undersized team couldn’t defend Xavier man-to-man and installed the now-famous 3-2 matchup zone, Sendek installed more motion and more flow into an offense that I affectionately referred to as “34 seconds or more.” With points hard to come by throughout the Pac-10 almost two-thirds of the way into this conference season, Unkie Herb had to find a way for the Devils to put more points on the scoreboard. Though his guys fell on their faces against Washington, Sendek’s ingenuity has once again risen to the top of our minds and has kept Arizona State competitive in the strangest conference race in some time.
3) I almost feel bad for putting this in because I feel like saying even the slightest of negative things about Charli Turner-Thorne is like telling your mom you don’t like her meat loaf, but her Devils 66-62 loss at Washington State last weekend may go down as one of the lowest points of her tenure in Tempe. The perennially downtrodden Cougars entered the game winless in the Pac-10 and riding an 11-game skid overall. It was also the first time since 2004 that Washington State knocked off Arizona State. What more, the Sun Devils had WSU down 13 in the first half AND the Cougars turned the ball over 28…28…28 times! However, it goes to show that when you shoot poorly on any given night, you have a chance to lose.
4) The Tim Esmay era starts in 10 days. Get excited.
5) With a major tip of the cap to Ted Miller over at ESPN.com, we bring you this: On Monday, the Pac-10 hired former Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg as the conference’s new deputy commish and COO. Before his time in the Big 12, Weiberg spent nine years under Jim Delany in the Big Ten - right smack in the middle of the era when that league welcomed Penn State into the fold and charged hard toward annexing Notre Dame. He also helped lay the initial groundwork for the monster Big Ten TV contracts and, later, the launch of the Big Ten Network. Are your gears turning yet? With the Pac-10’s TV deal expiring in 2012 and the league’s collective eye still (for some reason) on expanding to 12 teams, you do the math.
Sun Devil of the Week
We’ll head back to the mats for this one for the 2nd straight week.
Despite losing their 3rd straight match and dropping to 8-7 in a loss to Iowa State, both Anthony Robles and Jake Meredith pulled off stunners and garner Pitchfork Nation’s honors.
Robles, the 3rd ranked wrestler in the nation, fought from an early deficit in his match against #5 Andrew Long. After falling behind 10-3 early, Robles, who has now won 10 straight individual matches, pulled off a stunning comeback, scoring nine straight points off three near-falls to in 12-10.
Unranked Meredith’s victory over #7 Jerome Ward was even more stunning - a 3-2 scrapping victory despite the fact that the Devils were already headed toward a match loss. Meredith and Ward entered the third period of their match tied at 2 and battled until the final 10 seconds, when the referee called Ward for stalling, awarding Meredith one penalty point, giving him the victory.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
First off - allow me to blow my own horn for a second - as I came only 4 points off the cumulative total at Super Bowl XLIV and correctly assessed that the New Orleans Saints would pull off the victory. You’re welcome.
This week, I implore all of you, as we get tied up in the news of massive Toyota recalls, Barack Obama’s health care summit and Snowmageddon, to remember that Friday marks one month since a massive 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, killing 150,000 and displacing millions.
Thanks to our never-ending news cycle, which was specifically designed with the short-attention span in mind, Haiti’s plight has dropped off our national radar screen over the past two weeks or so.
I’m not implying or asking to donate any more than you may already have, but even though we’re a month out and news networks might not be devoting much time to the topic at all, remember that it’s still going on down there.
Follow Justin on Twitter at @jskarp, be his friend on Facebook and check out his Devil Blast every Tuesday here on Pitchfork Nation and Fanster.com.
I admit it - I give up. This is officially a Tuesday feature now. My schedule and workload just makes more sense for me to finish this column on Monday night instead of Sunday night, so this here column is going to be up on the second day of the week rather than the 1st.
Plus, I dislike Tuesday more than I like Monday anyway, so I hope these nuggets of (semi)wisdom push you through what I think is the most frustrating day of the week. I mean, come on, Monday is bad, but Tuesday is almost as far away from the weekend as Monday is except you’re now past the point of reminiscing on how cool of a Saturday/Sunday you just had.
To hell with Tuesday. I’m doing this day a favor.
Casting My Ballot - Away With Polls
The Associated Press, ESPN, USA Today, the BCS, Baseball America and numerous other publications and outlets do something funny to us during various college seasons.
Their national polls make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We beat our chests when our teams are #1, we jump for joy when we finally crack into a top 25 and we feel that familiar pang of anticipation when our squad appears in the “receiving votes” category - so close to the brass ring and within snatching distance of having a prized number next to your team’s abbreviation on the score bug.
However, I want to let you in on the dirty little secret that everyone except guys who throw pigskin around a field knows - polls are hooey.
Straight bunk.
I mean seriously, what sport’s national authority would be dumb enough to base something as vital and sought after as their national championship on a bunch of ballots and algorithms?
*slowly tip-toes backwards away from Dennis Erickson’s office*
It’s painful but true. Polls don’t mean anything in college sports. They exist as the only measuring stick, an enormously subjective one at that, which teams have against their brethren across the country instead of their own region or conference.
There are no national standings in college football, basketball or baseball. There’s no true way to determine whether Arizona State is better than, say, LSU in any sport until they play. We have tangible evidence of who is better than whom in every league because they play each other and come up with this remarkable concept - standings. We can look at the Pac-10 standings in any given year and see that Oregon is better than Oregon State, USC (usually) is better than Oregon and everybody is better than Washington State.
That rings true in every other intercollegiate sport. The difference is that each of those sports has a true way to make sure that the best of the best from across the country pit against each other on the field or court rather than in a back room.
Before I go on, the last thing this column will be today is a grandstand for a college football playoff. In fact, the lack of one is exactly what keeps the swaths of football fans (including me) dying for Sunday evening to come around when the new polls come out and then, from November on, those BCS rankings.
The real truth is that college football truly is the only sport in which we are forced to and should actually care about where your team is ranked and, realistically, you should only care if said squad is within shouting distance of #1 or #2.
In the past two weeks in college basketball, we’ve seen so many supposed top-ranked teams fall it makes your head spin. Texas has lost three of its last five. Kentucky lost to South Carolina a mere 36 hours after taking the throne. Team after team at the top of the rankings will inherently fall in every sport as long as they lose a single game - something in basketball that hasn’t happened since 1976 and I’m pretty sure has never happened in college baseball.
In fact, since the seeding system began in 1979, only six teams that entered the NCAA Basketball Tournament ranked #1 have gone one to win the national title.
1982
North Carolina Tar Heels
1992
Duke Blue Devils
1995
UCLA Bruins
2000
Michigan State Spartans
2001
Duke Blue Devils
2007
Florida Gators
That means in 30 years since Magic v. Bird, 24 top-ranked teams have entered March Madness and fallen directly onto their collective faces.
College baseball is even more convoluted. If there’s any more fractured sport where a handful of teams have dominated the landscape forever, talent pools are heavily concentrated in certain areas and many cold-weather teams spend the first three weeks of their season on the road, polls on the college diamond are among the most worthless in sports.
So, this entire column is just a long way to get to the point of this: this week, the major outlets that cover college baseball released their preseason polls. Baseball America calls Arizona State their #14. Rivals calls us the 9th ranked team in America.
The ESPN/USA Today poll neglected to include the Sun Devils. And, because of that, there has been a groundswell of frustration and anger - how could ANYONE leave our Devils of the Tim Esmay era out of any poll - ever?
It just doesn’t matter.
Those warm-fuzzies of being highly ranked in a poll don’t mean squat once the postseason rolls around and, despite all the time you spent in the top 5 or the top 10 or the top 25 or the top whatever, Fresno State could still knock you around on your home field and send you to an early summer.
Call me when the season starts. I’ll be the one not caring about where anyone is ranked until the tournament starts.
Five Things to Stew About
1 - Undoubtedly, we knew Pat Murphy was going to end up somewhere. That place was confirmed this week when the San Diego Padres hired the Devils recently-deposed bench boss as a special assistant to the baseball operations department. I’m not exactly sure what a special assistant does - it could be one step above Assistant to the Traveling Secretary for all we know - but it’s nice to see Murph get some love from Major League Baseball after so many excellent years building great players and great men in Tempe and on other stops in his college coaching career. The recently suffering Padres organization is now better off for having Pat in their organization. Don’t overlook the fact that the team is now run by Jeff Moorad, who spent numerous years in the desert in the Arizona Diamondbacks front office, either; he had a front row seat what Murphy was doing at Packard Stadium.
2 - The two ASU teams that took the floor last week against California and Stanford were like Jeykll and Hyde; two complete opposite ends of the spectrum were on display in the split weekend. On Thursday, we saw the team that let themselves get into a major 1st half hole and not have quite enough steam to fight back for the victory. Two days later, the team exploded for a win over Stanford which the margin of victory didn’t quite represent quite what a butt-kicking it really was. Either way, I think it goes without saying that in this helter-skelter Pac-10, the more Saturday-type performances we get out of the Sun Devils, the better.
3 - I got this question from a couple people VIA Twitter, so I feel like answering it here. If I’m Jamelle McMillan, I’m a little nervous about the impending arrival of JuCo transfer Brandon Dunson, who announced his intent to come to Tempe next season this week. Not only is Dunson a natural point who thinks defense ahead of offense, he’ll automatically be the most up-tempo guard in the rotation in 2010-11 and improve the Sun Devils inside/outside game. We all know how much Herb Sendek values a guy that plays tireless defense and, with Derek Glasser’s impending departure, his spot is up for grabs among several returning one-guards. McMillan has struggled to stay healthy this season and has equally had trouble finding consistency when he is on the court this year.
4 - Speaking of Glasser, don’t think that he won’t respond to his benching. The senior was held out of the starting lineup on Saturday for the first time in 54 games as the Sun Devils whipped Stanford. Herb Sendek said the message to the only starting point guard he’s ever had in Tempe was to stop pressing and get back to his game and the rapidly matured Glasser will do just that. Unkie Herb was cryptic for his reasons for sitting Derek, who had been mightily struggling from the field over the last two weeks or so, but knowing the way Glasser has responded to adversity in the past on the court, this will fuel his fire. Derek will be back to himself very shortly.
5 - National Signing Day is Wednesday. Whoop-a-dee-doo. This is your token mention of the day when kids from across the country will begin sitting on the dotted line to play college football. Half of them will never see the football field in their careers, some will become nice role players and about 0.5% will become superstars. So, instead of looking ahead at the Devils 2010 class, it’s more prudent to mention that out of the signing class that just graduated after the 2009 season (which would spotlight the 2006 signing class), spat out only four guys who made a legitimate impact on this team over their time in Tempe - Travis Goethel, Troy Nolan, Kyle Williams and Ryan Torain. Sure, guys like Saia Falahola, Jon Hargis, Ryan McFoy, Dimitri Nance, Justin Tryon and even some kid named Danny Sullivan were part of Dirk Koetter’s last signing class, but none of them made anything more than a barely tangible mark on the program. So, we’ll revisit Wednesday’s signing class on February 2, 2013, when they’re gone.
Sun Devil of the Week
It would be easy to just write the words Ty Abbott in this space and leave it be after he rained three’s on the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday, but that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it?
Instead, this week’s SDOTW honor goes to someone who should be getting much more attention than he or his team gets.
On Sunday afternoon, ASU wrestler Anthony Robles won his 8th consecutive match in a dual loss at home to Oregon State, breaking an overall four-match winning streak for Arizona State. However, Robles dominating 17-0 win over Jason Lara pushed his season record to a startling 22-2. What more, his match victory kept ASU alive in the dual after eight previous matches in the meet went Oregon State’s way.
Robles continues to climb in the ASU wrestling record books, one that is dotted with some of the best West Coast wrestlers in college history.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget that he’s doing all of this with one fewer leg than everyone else.
I got to meet Robles back in 2006, the year before he started wrestling at Arizona State. There could not be a more humble and appreciative kid than Robles and he deserves all the success he’s earning in his Sun Devil career.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
This one is short and sweet: Saints 30, Colts 20.
This Week in Sun Devil Sports
Wednesday, February 3 Men’s Golf at the Hilo Big Island Invitational
Thursday, February 4 Women’s Basketball vs. Washington, 6:30 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Men’s Basketball at Washington State, 7:00 PM in Pullman Men’s Golf at the Hilo Big Island Invitational
Friday, February 5 Wrestling at Cal Poly, 6:30 PM in San Luis Obispo, CA Gymnastics vs. Utah, 7:30 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Men’s Golf at the Hilo Big Island Invitational
Saturday, February 6 Women’s Tennis at California, Noon in Berkeley Women’s Basketball vs. Washington State, 1:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Men’s Basketball at Washington, 7:30 PM in Seattle Track & Field at the Lobo Classic in Albuquerque
Sunday, February 7 Wrestling vs. Iowa State, 2:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena
Follow Justin on Twitter at @jskarp, be his friend on Facebook and look for his weekly Devil Blast every Monday here on Pitchfork Nation.
First off…an apology obviously for having this a day late. I’m trying very hard to get into a new rhythm and make sure this column comes out and I ended up 24 hours behind schedule this time around. Bear with me and I promise the good times will still roll.
Arizona Loss No Reason to Panic…Yet
The streak is over.
Yes, the last five games between our Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats have been fun for us. However, as the Wildcats learned on a January night in 2008, all good things must come to an end.
Sure, it wasn’t quite the ridiculous run that Lute Olson’s ‘Cats put on the Sun Devils over what seemed like decades to Sun Devil basketball fans, but it was finally a little feather in the cap for the guys in Maroon & Gold when it comes to roundball.
If you talk to any Wildcat fan this week, though, they’ll beat their chest and proudly say that all is back right in the world of Pac-10 basketball. Arizona once again owns Arizona State, they say, based on the 77-58 beatdown their Wildcats put on ASU on Saturday night at Wells Fargo Arena.
Slam on your brakes. There’s no reason to hit the panic button.
Yet.
During the offseason as we closely monitored the wild and wooly coaching situation in Tucson, the one thing that stuck in my craw was that the Wildcats would certainly be pursuing not only a coach that would help reclaim Arizona’s spot on top of the Pac-10 but also reestablish state dominance over Arizona State.
The Sean Miller hire will turn out to be as much a coup for Arizona as Herb Sendek has been for Arizona State. You can mark my words on that.
However, my appeal to Sun Devil fans is to not slip back into a “woe is us” attitude about this program.
Sure, Saturday’s loss was a big chink in the armor for Arizona State. But with any rivalry (and yes, this match-up is finally a rivalry again), come the ebbs and flows of programs as they rise and fall. The one thing that I truly believe has been guaranteed over the Devils’ now defunct five-game winning streak over Arizona is that for the time being, this rivalry is finally an even playing field.
Frankly, that’s all we’ve really wanted since Olson took over in Tucson, isn’t it? Year in and year out, ASU/Arizona games were ridiculous one-sided affairs in which the ‘Cats filled Ned Wulk Court with horribly annoying red-clad fans cheered on as their boys from Tucson whipped the Devils up and down the court OR let Arizona State hang around for just long enough to make our fans think we could pull off an upset.
Now, every game is a struggle. Every game has meaning between these two teams because this truly is a rivalry again.
In terms of this specific loss, though, there is reason to worry. Derek Glasser said it best when he mentioned that despite Arizona State having one of the best, if not THE most stifling defense in college basketball, they must shoot well to win basketball games. We now have two classic examples of this - the USC loss in which the Devils limited the high-scoring Trojans to 47 points but lost and now this performance at home against Arizona.
It doesn’t matter if Arizona State is playing Arizona or Duke or Texas or the New Jersey Institute of Technology. When you miss 10 of 11 shots to start the 2nd half when you’re only up 2, you’re not going to beat anyone in America.
Meanwhile, for the first time in conference play, Arizona State’s lack of size and strength in the post was exploited. ASU didn’t struggle to rebound per se, but for the first time since Ivan Radenovic was trawling the paint for Arizona, the Wildcats outmuscled the Devils down low.
On the bright side, the loss to Arizona doesn’t do anything to jeopardize ASU’s chances to finish in the upper level of the Pac-10. This past weekend was another weird one in the conference outside of California’s sweep of the Oregon schools to take a full game lead on the Devils, USC, Stanford, Arizona and UCLA who all stand at 4-3 right now.
Beyond that, Washington got swept by the LA schools, UCLA picked up two much needed wins over UW and Washington State and Stanford picked up a couple wins over the Ducks and Beavers.
Nothing is as it seems in the Pac-10 this year and with the red hot Bay Area programs coming up this weekend, it’s the perfect time for ASU to get off the mat and recover from a discouraging but not panic-inducing loss to our arch-rivals.
Plus, February 21 at McKale Center is right around the corner, anyway.
Five Things to Stew About
1) It’s no secret that Mike Nixon will go down as one of the hardest working and most upstanding players of this era of Sun Devil football. This is why I got an accelerated pang of happiness when it was announced that he was receiving a post-graduate scholarship from the National Football Foundation. Arizona State has had its share of unsavory characters who have misrepresented the program over the last few years (draw your own conclusions) or players who are just downright selfish (looking directly at Terrell Suggs), but I’ll look back at Nixon’s career in Tempe and be proud that he was a Sun Devil. Outside of his tireless contributions on the field; he didn’t miss a single game in his career, started 31, made 253 tackles, eight picks and six forced fumbles; he was a model citizen and highly regarded captain of this team. Simply put, he was a rock for the Devils’ defense and the kind of kid that I wish we had 50 more of.
2) Several readers have e-mailed and Twittered to me lately that Arizona State has still not filled the open spot in their 2010 schedule which San Jose State caused just before last season started. The Sun Devils still only have 11 games scheduled for the upcoming season and, with FCS Northern Arizona already on the slate to open the campaign on September 4, time might soon become a factor despite the 2010 season not starting for 9 months. I have not learned anything new about the situation since talking to a source about it early last season, so I’ll repeat what they told me: it’s a difficult situation that ASU has been placed in with blame specifically laying on the San Jose State Spartans, who basically screwed Arizona State by buying out and taking a much larger payday to play Alabama in a suicide payday game. The last I learned, ASU apparently had its choice of only two teams to negotiate a game with on this short notice. Also, simply paying another FCS team to come to Tempe seems to be out of the question. Since NAU is already on the schedule and the NCAA states that only one win against a lower division team per year counts toward bowl eligibility, it would force the Sun Devils to win 7 games instead of 6 just to reach that plateau.
3) Last week, I pooh-poohed on the commitment of Taylor Kelly, basically saying that the only thing Arizona State needed less than another young quarterback in the system are September afternoon games at Sun Devil Stadium. However, your resident recruiting curmudgeon IS actually pretty stoked about JuCo transfer Brice Schwab giving his verbal to Dennis Erickson. In our 2009 football season recap, I stressed a major need for Matt Lubick and the recruiting staff to significantly refocus on bringing in high-quality offensive linemen, and the former USC left tackle recruit, ranked 9th in the nation among CC players by Rivals, fell right into the Sun Devils lap. If he pans out in Spring Practice, Schwab should be right in the mix to start along the Devils line in a gap left gaping by the loss of Shaun Lauvao (major loss) and Tom Njunge (no comment) to graduation. In addition to Schwab, the Devils have already signed five other offensive linemen - Jamil Douglas, Aderious Simmons, Tyler Sulka, Sil Ajawara and Chris De Armas. This is promising.
4) Speaking of recruiting, Arizona State announced on Tuesday morning that they’ll hold their annual National Signing Day press conference next Wednesday, where like usual, Dennis Erickson will be peppered with questions about this latest recruiting class and how much of an impact the new Devil blood will make. I can almost hear the conversation now…everyone will get their questions in about specific players and specific positions and DE will do his best to extrapolate his new commits performance. However, and I hate to continue to bring up my ill-will toward recruiting, forgive me if National Signing Day is right up there with the opening day of Australian Rules Football on the list of “moments in sports I wish I cared more about.” I’ll certainly give this list of 23 (so far) new additions to the ASU football team a good look-over, but then I’ll probably give no second thought to it until at least next season.
5) As we continue to count down the days until the opening of the Tim Esmay era at the WPB, the Sun Devils crack media relations staff has been busy putting together their Sun Devil all-decade baseball team over on the official website. It will be a 25-man full roster with the stipulation that honored players must have spent at least two seasons in Maroon & Gold. So, for those curious, Ian Kinsler would not be eligible since he transferred after some balding midget named Pedroia beat him out for the shortstop spot…plus his great college years were at Mizzou anyway. The first three spots on the team were released yesterday and they were awarded to catchers Tuffy Gosewisch and Petey Paramore and infielder Jeff Larish, who easily earned my honors for ASU moment of the decade when he slammed three homeruns in the Sun Devils 2005 upset of Nebraska at the College World Series.
Sun Devil(s) of the Week
For the 2nd straight week, some women’s ballers take home this honor. While we were all stewing over a discouraging men’s loss to the Wildcats in Tempe, the very next day Charli Turner-Thorne took the ladies down to Tucson and laid a sweet little 73-67 win over the Kitties on their home floor, extending the Sun Devils winning streak over Arizona to 9 games.
The Devils fought back from an early 33-25 deficit to snatch the win for the 12-6 Devils. However, individual honors this week must go to both Becca Tobin and Kayli Murphy for combining to yank down 20 rebounds to pace the Arizona State victory.
CTT and her staff have lacked a consistent big body to rebound since the days of Emily Westerberg and Kristen Kovesdy manning the post. Despite that lack of size, the Devils continued to win. However, Tobin and Murphy’s tag-teaming of the glass have been a major part of Arizona State recovering from a slow start in conference.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
Kyle Whelliston, who runs the websites The Mid-Majority and Basketball State and also contributes to the Basketball Times, penned an essay two years ago which stated that “everything ends in a loss.”
While I don’t always agree with what Kyle and his borderline elitist anti-power conference stance, that credo immediately jumped into my head as I watched Brett Favre’s 3rd and 15 pass with :15 seconds left in the NFC Championship game floated into the hands of Tracy Porter, who before then had been possibly having one of the worst games for a defensive back in NFL history.
Seriously think about it for a second. Who better to personify the idea that everything ends in a loss better than the star-crossed PackersJets Vikings signal caller?
It’s now a widely circulated fact that each of the final passes Brett threw for the Falcons, Packers, Jets and (presumably) Vikings was an interception. This is all from a guy who has now lost four NFC title games and a Super Bowl in his career on top of his lone championship victory which was, ironically, at the Louisiana Superdome 14 years ago.
Brett Favre went a long way in reclaiming some of his past individual glory with a remarkable 2009 season. The two interceptions he threw against New Orleans on Sunday night were just his 8th and 9th of the season, just a few years removed from when he threw 29 picks and 22 last season in New York.
However, his legacy as a team leader once he retires (at some point…God knows only when) will be one as a player who only got his team over the hump once. Even in that lone Super Bowl victory over New England in Super Bowl XXXI, the endearing image of Favre from that game wasn’t any super play but rather him running around the field like a mad man after throwing a touchdown pass to Andre Rison. That game will always be remembered for Desmond Howard’s 244 return yards and 99-yard kickoff return TD that iced the title for Green Bay.
Beyond that, he was an integral part of pissing away victories and playoff chances for the Packers, Jets and, now, Vikings. Brett’s legacy and individual stats will certainly put him into Canton one day - but I’ll certainly never judge him as a winner.
This Week in Sun Devil Sports
Thursday, January 28 Men’s Basketball vs. California, 6:30 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Women’s Basketball at Stanford, 7:00 PM at Maples Pavilion
Friday, January 29 Track & Field at the UW Invitational in Seattle Track & Field at the Mountain T Classic in Flagstaff
Saturday, January 30 Women’s Water Polo vs. CS-Bakersfield, 9:00 AM in Irvine, CA Women’s Water polo vs. Long Beach State, 1:45 PM in Irvine, CA Men’s Basketball vs. Stanford, 2:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Women’s Basketball at California, 2:30 PM at Haas Pavilion Women’s Tennis at Georgia Tech, 2:30 PM in Atlanta Women’s Water Polo vs. UC Irvine, 5:45 PM in Irvine, CA Track & Field at the Mountain T Classic in Flagstaff Track & Field at the UW Invitational in Seattle
Sunday, January 31 Women’s Gymnastics at UCLA, 2:00 PM at Pauley Pavilion Wrestling vs. Oregon State, 2:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Women’s Tennis vs. Kentucky or Alabama in Atlanta
First off, let’s explain what’s going on here. I told you guys I was sticking around for a weekly column on Pitchfork Nation. I keep my promises. If this space on Monday’s resembles Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback in any way, it’s because it does.
Every “Monday Devil Blast” will include a larger column on one topic, a spotlight on the top Arizona State performer of the week, five quick hits on what else is going on in Sun Devil land, a meandering non-Sun Devil thought and then a weekly schedule so you can keep up on what’s going on with ASU.
Without further ado…
Pac-10 Futility Is Perfect Opportunity for ASU
There’s simply no precedent for what we’re currently observing during the 2009-10 Pacific-10 men’s basketball season.
Well, that’s a lie. Last season, we all sat in the same place we are now talking about how bad the SEC was and debating whether or not that league deserved more than just its automatic bid into the NCAA tournament.
Once the bracket was released, three teams from the woeful league (Tennessee, Mississippi State and LSU) qualified. The Tigers were the highest seeded team in the dance with an 8 seed in the Midwest Region while Rick Stansbury’s Bulldogs only got in because of their stunning run through the conference tournament.
The pundits have been quick to jump all over The West Coast’s Premier Athletic Conference ™ this season and with due cause. Let’s face it: the 10 teams in this league have combined to lose to or have close shaves with the likes of Lipscomb, Portland, Montana, Idaho State, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Sacramento State, UIC, Seattle, Oral Roberts, James Madison, CS-Fullerton, CS-Bakersfield, Long Beach State, Wright State, Eastern Washington and Nicholls State.
That’s not quite the laundry list of stellar basketball programs. And, judging by that this week’s version of Bracketology from Joe Lunardi has two Pac-10 teams in it for the first time since the preseason, no one respects the Pac-10. And rightfully so.
As cheap as it may sound on the surface, this is the perfect time for our Sun Devils to strike.
Sure, winning the Pac-10 this season and earning the league’s automatic bid to the 2010 NCAA Tournament may be an equal accomplishment to being the skinniest kid at fat camp, but let’s really think about the history of this program over the past two decades for a moment.
2008-09 was the first time ASU even competed legitimately for a conference title in the Pac-10 Tournament era, one that dates back to the late 80’s, when the postseason became an every-year event.
Now, in the midst of a four-game conference winning streak and on a collision course with the possibility of an unprecedented 6th straight win overall against the Arizona Wildcats this Saturday, the proverbial iron is hot to be struck in Tempe.
To call this season strange would be an understatement. We’ve already seen the projected top two teams in the conference, California and Washington, tumble like dominos and expose serious flaws in their game; for Cal, a startling lack of size and, for Washington, startling inconsistency from the field. As a loyal reader of PFN pointed out to me a few days ago, this is the kind of season which makes looking at the scoreboard on Thursdays and Saturdays more fun than ever because you don’t authoritatively know who is going to win on a night-to-night basis.
Because of this jumble, the Pac-10 standings after three weeks of conference play read out like no one would ever expect in a REGULAR season – ASU on top, trailed by a half game by California and postseason-ineligible USC and a full game by traditional powers Washington and Arizona. Ernie Kent’s job is back on the hot seat in Eugene, Oregon State has taken a major step back from last year’s resurgence, Stanford is…well…as expected and UCLA is…well…not as expected.
This unpredictability is what will make this year’s Pac-10 champion the least respected title holder amongst college basketball’s power conferences.
This shouldn’t bother Herb Sendek’s Sun Devils, whose program already ranks among the least respected in the conference despite going 60-28 since Sendek’s first year in Tempe and back-to-back postseason appearances.
The general consensus from the national media was that despite several advances in recruiting and quality of play since Sendek’s hiring in 2006, this would be a step-back season in Tempe due to the losses of Jeff Pendergraph and James Harden from last year’s 2nd-round team.
So, let’s put two and two together. In a conference that everyone knew would be down, wouldn’t it be so appropriate for a team everyone expected to be down anyway to rise up and win the whole thing?
I think that would garner this program, the seniors like Derek Glasser and Eric Boateng, role players like Ty Abbott and Rihards Kuksiks and the young contributors like Trent Lockett, even more respect in some circles than one would think.
No one outside the Pac-10 truly knows how much those guys contributed to last year’s run to the Pac-10 title game and 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament. They saw the stories of James Harden’s lottery potential and what Jeff Pendergraph did to help resurrect this program from dormancy.
Now, if this team could rise to the top of a weak class and seize even more momentum, the building truly can continue. Despite the overall weakness of the league, you don’t have to put an asterisk on a Pac-10 Championship banner. A maroon-and-gold flag will not read 2009-10 Pac-10 Men’s Basketball Champions*.
Now is the time to step forward and seize this opportunity. “Carpe the rock”, if you will.
The fact is that Sean Miller won’t let Arizona stay down for much longer, Washington will restock, Cal will remain consistent and USC may continue to improve. It’s Arizona State’s time to keep pace. The point-shaving scandal ended any hope of that after the 1995 team went to the Sweet 16 and the 2003 Sun Devils never capitalized on the talents of Ike Diogu.
Winning the Pac-10, even in a down season, would go a long way in continuing to build this program.
Sun Devil of the Week
Everyone has been well focused on Ty Abbott and his surprising exploits during this four-game winning streak, but someone has to speak up for the run that women’s basketball senior Danielle Orsillo has been on over the past three games for Arizona State.
After losing their first three in Pac-10 play, Orsillo has seized the reins of Charli Turner Thorne’s team and has steered them back onto the tracks.
In a weekend sweep of the Oregon schools, Orsillo scored 17 and 20 respectively against the Ducks and Beavers, while her defense against Oregon last Thursday helped limit Oregon’s powerful offense to their 2nd lowest point total of the season.
Against the Beavers, while the Devils sputtered against the league’s worst team, the senior scored 13 of her 20 in the first half, including hitting three of the Devils final four buckets while they held off the scrappy but outmatched Beavers.
Much can be said about Orsillo’s tenacity and toughness over her years in Tempe and her leadership is definitely going to be a key as the Devils try to overcome an uncharacteristic 3-3 conference start.
Five Things To Stew About
1)Forgive me if I’m not running around with a lamp shade on my head celebrating QB Taylor Kelly’s commitment to Arizona State over the weekend. This isn’t based on the fact that he’s only a 2-star recruit, based on Rivals, since most of you know I only trust recruiting services as far as I can throw them. However, with the logjam Dennis Erickson and new offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone each face in 2010 under center, Kelly will not even be a factor until at least 2011, once Samson Szakacsy and Steven Threet are seniors. Hopefully by then, the Sun Devils will have turned to one of them or Brock Osweiler as a full-time starter. I also thoroughly hope that Kelly, a 17-year-old from Idaho, doesn’t hope to pursue Jake Plummer’s footsteps after he leaves Arizona State because…we all know how that turned out.
2)Some people have called Arizona State’s performance against the USC Trojans a few weeks ago the lowest point of Herb Sendek’s tenure in Tempe. However, the more that I’ve watched the Sun Devils as they’ve rebounded from that loss at the Galen Center, the more I think it’s an aberration rather than an indication of what this team really is. Mind you, it was an absolutely pathetic shooting night, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that that game was a match-up of the nation’s two best scoring defenses. I’m not making excuses for the Devils; shooting 24.4% for a game and scoring 37 points is unacceptable even against the best teams in the Pac-10; but after the last four games in which the Sun Devils have only given up an average of 51.6 points in their past five games (including the USC game), I think it goes to show that even when the Devils play their usual defense and have a mediocre shooting night, they’re going to win a bunch of basketball games.
3)Lane Kiffin’s ridiculous (really…I can’t think of a better word to describe it) hiring at USC, coupled with Pete Carroll’s less-than-surprising departure, certainly signals a shift not just in coaching power in the Pac-10 for 2010. The debacle over Carroll’s departure after nine seasons led to an exodus of a tremendous amount of talent from Troy. Also, don’t think that Norm Chow’s decision to decline a position in Kiffin’s new coaching staff isn’t a signal that there’s a definite and giant chink in the armor at Southern California. Even after losing four games, the knee-jerk reaction after the Rose Bowl was to automatically think that the Trojans would rise again and challenge for a BCS big even after an 8-4 season and an unprecedented two losses at home. However, beyond Oregon still being the clear class of the conference and Oregon State being a definite #2, the 2nd-tier bowls and 3rd place in the conference is clearly up for grabs between USC, Arizona State, Stanford and possibly California.
4)Near the end of Rob Evans’ tenure in Tempe, which came to a merciful close in 2006, I don’t think a single person surrounding that program would think the Sun Devils would ever sweep a season series from rival Arizona, let alone do it in back-to-back years AND snatch a game from them at the Pac-10 Tournament. Yet, here we sit with five straight wins over the Wildcats and a more than good chance at a 6th coming up on Saturday in Tempe. This statement isn’t any more insightful as it seems…it’s just an opportunity to ask you where you were on February 25, 2007, which was the last time Arizona beat Arizona State. It still blows your mind.
5)It has been all quiet on the Western Front over the past month or so when it comes to ASU baseball and the Pat Murphy fiasco, so here’s something to break the monotony: Tim Esmay’s hiring of former Sun Devil and MLB shortstop Mike Benjamin as a volunteer assistant coach should make longtime program supporters happy. Still, as the season opener with Northern Illinois approaches exactly one month from now, I still feel like there’s unfinished business when it comes to Sun Devil baseball and it’s casting a slight pall on what usually is my favorite time of the year.
Meandering non-Sun Devil Thought of the Week
Since newspapers began migrating toward the internet in the mid-90’s, publishers have been trying to find a way to monetize their interactive product.
A decade and a half later, they’ve yet to cross that precipice and they aren’t going to do so anytime soon.
In Phoenix, monetary woes have forced the East Valley Tribune to bankruptcy and the brink of closure and the shuttering of the Tucson Citizen while the shadow of layoffs and downsizing has continued to hover over the Arizona Republic.
Meanwhile, you’ve clicked around on AZCentral.com pretty much every day to get great Sun Devil and Valley sports coverage from the likes of Jeff Metcalfe, Doug Haller and the rest of that crew for the same price you pay to come to Pitchfork Nation.
Newspapers across the country have tried to make money off of their internet product for years and each time they have failed. Now, though, the undisputed heavyweight champion of newspapering is going to try its hand at establishing a paywall.
This is a watershed moment for the newspaper business as it continues to adapt to the emerging world of digital content; a world in which almost everything can be found at no cost. If the New York Times figures out a way to retain a solid online subscriber base to obtain their content, it will be the start of the business model across the industry that may actually work.
If an operation as large and prestigious as the Times can’t make this work, though, I severely doubt monetizing online content will ever happen.
This Week in Tempe
January 22 Women’s Tennis vs. UC Santa Barbara, 1:30 PM at Whiteman Tennis Center Wrestling vs. Nebraska, 8:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Swimming & Diving at California Track & Field at the Friday Night Challenge in Flagstaff
January 23 Women’s Tennis vs. UC Davis, Noon at Whiteman Tennis Center Men’s Basketball vs. Arizona, 7:30 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Swimming & Diving at Stanford
January 24 Women’s Gymnastics vs. Arizona, 2:00 PM at Wells Fargo Arena Wrestling at Embry-Riddle, 3:00 PM in Prescott, AZ Women’s Basketball at Arizona, 4:00 PM at McKale Center
The Arizona Republic has obtained and released the list of alleged violations that the NCAA has accused the Arizona State baseball program of committing between 2004 and 2009.
The list is damning.
A total of 10 violations are outlined by the compliance committee. While some might call some of them minor, there are a few that have resulted in other cases in the ineligibility of players and the loss of scholarships.
Here are the allegations, with my commentary mixed in.
1. Baseball officials violated a one-call-per-week rule by making at least 490 phone calls to prospective athletes between January 2004 and June 2009, the NCAA said.
These are the 500 excessive phone calls between Murphy and his staff and recruits.
2. Baseball coach Pat Murphy and four others allegedly committed ethical violations and compromised the NCAA investigation by discussing, and preparing spreadsheets on, matters related to the probe.
This is a little disturbing. It alleges that Murphy and other members of the athletic department knew of impending violations and did nothing to stop them, rather, they documented them.
3. A then-assistant coach engaged in unethical conduct by denying he had conversations with another staff member about improper phone calls to prospects, the NCAA said.
This is pretty standard. Of course they’ll deny any wrong doing.
4. Murphy and a former staffer violated phone-call and other rules in recruiting a prospective athlete.
5. Former athletes, designated as student managers, performed on-field coaching duties during games and batting practices. Their involvement violated regulations that limit the number of coaches.
I’m trying to think back over the years and try and remember who these players and/or coaches might have been.
6. Baseball athletes received impermissible training at non-ASU sports centers between spring 2004 and spring 2008 for a total of $63,000 in extra benefits.
This, presumably, revolves around players improper use of Athlete’s Performance, the training facility located just east of the university.
7. Twenty athletes received a combined $5,889 for work they did not do in Murphy’s Programs for Youth program.
It’s a small amount, roughly an average of just $285 per player. If you’ll recall, though, this is the violation that rendered Oklahoma QB Rhett Bomar ineligible four years ago.
8. Murphy failed to promote an atmosphere for compliance with NCAA rules and to monitor practices of baseball administrators between January 2004 and June 2009, the NCAA alleged.
Presumably, Love terminated Murphy on November 20 to try and appease the NCAA. That’s just my opinion, though.
9. ASU violated institutional control principles related to allegations No. 1, 5, 6 and 7.
This is the “lack of institutional control” violation. It’s the one that states that the athletic department as a whole, coupled with the baseball program, had no proper oversight and contributed to an atmosphere where all of these violations could occur.
Arizona State is in danger of being found to be a repeat offender of this rule after being found to have a lack of control over the football program in the wake of the Loren Wade financial aid debacle.
10. ASU committed a secondary, or lesser, violation by conducting a baseball camp for six prospective athletes during a period when no recruiting was to take place.
This one isn’t major on the surface. It’s the least likely one to land ASU in deep water.
Amidst all the uncertainty and turmoil staring the Arizona State athletic program in the face in the midst of accusations of NCAA violations, at least one thing is iron clad.
The men need a quality win in the worst way and it’s not going to come easily this weekend.
Last season around this time, the Sun Devils faced one of their stiffest tests of the season when they traveled to SoCal to take on the San Diego State Aztecs.
Arizona State won, but not without a fight in one of the most nip-and-tuck games the Devils played all season. This year will be no different, save the change of venue.
The Aztecs, fresh off a convincing win in Tucson that cemented them as a force to be reckoned with on the West Coast, are up in Tempe tomorrow afternoon in what will be the Sun Devils’ first post-finals week match-up.
And they thought tests were over for the semester.
The Devils certainly looked dominating in their 76-34 win over Delaware State; the team allowed the fewest points in a game since 1949. However, as Doug Haller pointed out on Twitter during that game, the Hornets were one of the worst teams ASU had faced in years.
SDSU…they’re a little better. The Devils have still lost two of their last three, including the 81-68 loss to BYU in Provo in what arguably was the team’s worst performance since the 2006-07 Devils started 0-15 in Pac-10 play.
The Aztecs ride into the Valley on a five game winning streak. They’ve already taken care of the other two Arizona schools (NAU by 41 and Arizona by 17) during this current run. They’re led by stud freshman forward Kawhi Leonard, who has posted back-t0-back double-doubles heading into Saturday.
The key to beating San Diego State will be to keep them off the glass. The Aztecs (8-2) have outrebounded their opponents in all eight of their wins so far this season. If they want to grab their first win in Tempe since 1977, they’ll have to dominate the boards - something that’s not out of the question, considering the woeful offensive rebounding performance against BYU.
Derek Glasser is the one to watch on an individual level - he sits just 7 assists away from breaking the all-time assists record at Arizona State. It also goes without saying that Rihards Kuksiks consistency could use a shot in the arm. The Lovable Latvian’s(tm) 1st half shooting woes haven’t been disastrous yet but, if they continue, could present a serious problem out of the gates.
More than anything, the Devils need a quality win over a quality opponent to prove that A) teams in the Pac-10 can, in fact, win outside of conference and B) gain some much needed momentum heading into the start of Pac-10 play.
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There are a select few things that will ever make me turn off an Arizona State Sun Devils game of any type.
First off, I’d like to take the time to thank R.P. Cotta over at Inside Sparta for writing his rebuttal to last week’s Devil Blast and for a couple of you Spartan fans for making the effort to engage in dialogue. When I got no response from San Jose State fans over the first couple days after I published the column, I got worried that no one really even cared enough to respond.
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The Arizona Republic has obtained and released the list of alleged violations that the NCAA has accused the Arizona State baseball program of committing between 2004 and 2009.
Amidst all the uncertainty and turmoil staring the Arizona State athletic program in the face in the midst of accusations of NCAA violations, at least one thing is iron clad.
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