Blogging with the Devils

Few are as insufferable on-the-air as Dick Vitale, but as he points out in his preseason top 40 on ESPN.com (and Arizona State coach Herb Sendek reiterated at media day Wednesday), Wells Fargo Arena should host eight premier teams, with all but Xavier coming from the Pac-10.

Sorry I can’t link to his rankings; it’s part of ESPN Insider, but you can sign up for free.

Here’s a glimpse:

No. 5 — UCLA

No. 10 — Oregon

Brook Lopez

No. 13 — Stanford (this was before 6-foot-10 center Brook Lopez was declared academically ineligible for fall semester, although the Cardinal will be contenders by season’s end).

No. 16 — Washington State

No. 17 — USC

No. 27 — Arizona

No. 34 — Washington

No. 39 — Xavier

ASU tight end Brent Miller catches the winning touchdown pass in overtime at Washington last year. (Seattle Times photo)

Arizona State tight end Brent Miller will undergo arthoscopic surgery on Friday to determine if there is cartilage or ligament damage in the right knee that has been nagging him since the second game of the season.

Miller, a senior, suffered a medical collateral ligament sprain against Colorado and has missed two games since, including last week’s contest at Washington State. He had reconstructive surgery on the knee in 2003.

“They think it’s OK, but it’s safer for us to go in and see,” coach Dennis Erickson said.

Erickson will continue to utilize a tight-end rotation of Brady Conrad, Tyrice Thompson, Andrew Pettes and Jovon Williams.

Defensive tackle Michael Marquardt has been selected as a semifinalist for the Draddy Trophy, which is known as the “Academic Heisman.” The finalists will be announced on Oct. 25, with the winner named at a Dec. 4 dinner in New York.

ASU offensive lineman Grayling Love was a Draddy finalist in 2005, and OL Andrew Carnahan was a semifinalist last year.

A crowd of about 62,000 is expected for Saturday’s game against Washington at Sun Devil Stadium. That would be the largest announced attendance for an ASU home contest since 67,635 for the Nov. 25, 2005, game against Arizona.

Just finished Arizona State’s basketball media day at Wells Fargo Arena. Some quick tidbits which won’t make it into Thursday’s story in the Tribune:

Herb Sendek

A well-tanned coach Herb Sendek looked quite dapper in a pinstripe suit. He’s been on the recruiting trail until last week. The Devils already received verbal commitments from Taylor Rohde (Phoenix Pinnacle) and Johnny Coy from Missouri, and they’re hoping for a third.

Eric Boateng

Eric Boateng looks like he’s put on 10-15 pounds of muscle. “He’s almost a different person this year,” Sendek said of his likely starting center, who sat out last season after transferring from Duke.

Sendek said the team tried to schedule a game before the Maui Invitational, but it didn’t work. Now he feels his team will be better off going against the likes of Illinois and Duke cold, the idea being this young team will find its way the hard way.

This will be part of Thursday’s story, but the players seemed genuinely excited about this group. Remember, though, the current roster has six players who saw game action last season, which means eight have not. As highly touted as these newcomers are, there’s no circumventing time and experience.

Practice begins this weekend, right before the ASU-Washington football game. Pac-10 media day is Nov. 1 in Los Angeles, where both Sendek and Jeff Pendergraph will be in attendance on behalf of ASU.

My apologies for the blog inactivity during the last week. Much of that was beyond my control, as we had a software switch that shut the Tribune’s blogs down for a few days.

Then, when we got back up and running, the switch resulted in old posts appearing as one giant paragraph, with art missing or out of place. As a result, much of my blog time during the last couple of days has been spent simply making the posts, all 91 of them, presentable — not to mention readable — again. I will not tolerate an unsightly blog, and neither should you.

Among the recent Sun Devil goings-on:

Much of the chatter among Arizona State fans in the last couple of days has been on this column from the Seattle-Post Intelligencer regarding Dennis Erickson.

Through an ASU spokesman, Erickson denied attempting to convince running back Deonte Jackson, or any of his former Idaho players, to follow him to Tempe, as was asserted in the linked column.

With Erickson returning to one of his former schools, Washington State, last week, his nomadic coaching tendencies were again subject to criticism; the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review fired its salvo in the days before the game.

Should ASU defeat Washington on Saturday night, the Sun Devils will likely enjoy their highest-ever placement in the Bowl Championship Series standings, which debut on Sunday. BCS Guru has the Sun Devils 11th in its unofficial standings, compiled after last week’s games.

ASU has appeared in the BCS standings in one season, 2004, peaking at No. 14.

Baseball coach Pat Murphy recently made a large donation of baseball equipment to Girls And Boys Town, the non-profit organization dedicated to housing and educating at-risk children. Its national headquarters is near Omaha, Neb.

When the Sun Devils played in the College World Series in June, they practiced at the Girls And Boys Town campus twice. At the time, he called the facility a “tremendous place to develop kids lives and give them a chance.”

Finally, it has nothing to do with ASU, but this has got to be the car-dealership commercial of the year. I have been chuckling non-stop for two days.

A few quick notes to pass along from the Arizona State basketball side:

Coach Herb Sendek just returned from his cross-country travels, with recruiting playing a prominent role in these excursions.

Media day is coming up on Wednesday, and the team’s first practice commences Friday.

Last, but most important, the Sun Devils will host a public scrimmage Oct. 27 at Wells-Fargo Arena at 4 p.m., followed by the ASU-California football game at 7 p.m.

Martin Stadium on a pleasant day.

After braving the elements in November games at Washington State in 2002, ‘03 and ‘05, Arizona State embraced a Pac-10 schedule rotation switch that results in it visiting Pullman, Wash., early in the conference season, not later.

This year, ASU plays at Pullman a month earlier, but it evidently will not escape the weather that often makes games at Washington State a challenge for visiting teams. The forecast for Saturday’s game at the Palouse calls for temperatures in the 50s with a chance of precipitation.

Sun Devils coach Dennis Erickson is well-schooled on the home-field advantages of Martin Stadium. He coached the Cougars in 1987 and ‘88 and has brought a visiting team there several times, most recently Idaho a year ago.

“You deal with the weather, and the students really get into the games,” Erickson said. “That’s what they get fired up for, that’s what they do. Saturdays are an exciting day for them. Football is what it’s about up there, and the fans make it hard on you. You don’t know what the weather will be like, and you have to fight through a lot of different things.”

Drew Bledsoe sets to throw a snowy Pullman pass against Washington in 1992.

ASU lost in Pullman in 2002 and ‘03 before finally breaking through two years ago, when a goal-line stand in the fourth quarter helped it to a 27-24 victory. The Sun Devils had to fight through the weather that day, and so did I.

Martin Stadium’s press box is not the most modern in the college football world, so after games, writers are sent to a room in an adjacent building to write and file their stories. After finishing my work, I began a half-mile walk back to my car in the cold and dark when it started raining buckets.

I pulled my jacket up over my head and pressed on. Soon afterward, though, rain turned to hail. Fortunately, I found a phone booth to take refuge in for about 10 minutes.

On Friday, Tribune columnist Craig Morgan and myself get on a plane for Spokane and will make the drive to Pullman the next morning. My umbrella is already packed.

A victory against the Cougars will make the Sun Devils bowl eligible, which is as much of a testament to ASU’s success this year as it is an indictment of the bowl system, where six wins and 22 guys with a pulse punches your ticket to a postseason destination.

With his team at 5-0, Erickson’s challenge is to guard against overconfidence.

Such teams as Miami (Fla.) in the late 1980s and early ’90s were justified in believing that they could win simply by stepping on the field. Erickson, who coached some of those wildly successful Hurricanes squads, said that his current team must know its limitations.

“We have a tough situation on our hands every week,” Erickson said. “We’re not freakin’ (Southern California.) I wouldn’t put us in that category, where we would be favored against anyone. The reality of where we’re at in this program is that we have to worry about focusing on winning. The guys have done a good job of focusing on improvement, and now, we have to go to a tough place to play.”