Talking Tourney with Herbie
February 19th, 2008, 5:43 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Mark Heller
Back in swing. There wasn’t much left to say from Saturday’s misery against California which wasn’t already written.
The Pac-10 standings are no less muddled this week than any other week this season, but it didn’t prevent Arizona State coach Herb Sendek from opining about the Tournament selections.
More on that below. Here are a few points of interest to come from Tuesday:
Ty Abbott busted out (to put it mildly) of a shooting slump with 30 points on Saturday. His last big game was at California in mid-January.
Before the Stanford game two weeks ago, he was in the gym at 11 p.m. at night for nearly two hours shooting 3-pointers. He said the problems have been more mental than physical.
“It kind of felt like I was shooting a baseball,” he said.
He told teammates Antwi Atuahene and Steve Jones he felt good again, but started 0-fer against the Cardinal until he hit a big 3-pointer in the final minute of ASU’s comeback.
Much like last year’s high school state tournament, ASU’s Ty Abbott (Phoenix Desert Vista) won the battle Saturday, but California’s Harper Kamp (Mesa Mountain View) won the war. (Thomas Boggan/Tribune)
Sendek often fields questions comparing the Pac-10 to his North Carolina State days in the ACC, and will often shy away from comparison questions in general.
Even though a Sendek-coached team once made the Tournament with a sub-.500 record (NC State went 7-9 in ACC games in 2004-2005), similar secrecy was expected when he was asked about the Pac-10 in the NCAA Tournament, and whether a 9-9 conference record would be good enough to get into the Tournament for the first time in league history (as many pundits are predicting).
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all, given the strength of this league,” Sendek said. “I’d be surprised if a 9-9 team didn’t make it.
“I can’t even fathom how the NCAA Tournament committee, at this point, can even begin to discern and sort it out, the way college basketball has evolved. I can’t even imagine, once you get beyond the obvious teams and automatic bids, how you discern, of the next 50 teams, who the best teams are. I think it’s an impossibility it’s so hard.”
Renardo Sidney paid ASU and the team’s locker room an unofficial visit after Saturday’s loss. Sidney, the 6-foot-10 forward from L.A. is a top-3 national recruit. He met with Sendek, assistant Scott Pera and James Harden (whom he played with for a season early in high school) for at least an hour after the game.
Nobody affiliated with the school could comment per NCAA rules, but the Sun Devils are in the mix with UCLA and USC as leading contenders for Sidney, who’s drawn comparisons to Kevin Garnett and Chris Webber.
Programming Changes: The ASU-USC game at Wells Fargo Arena on March 1 will be at 4 p.m. and televised on FSN Arizona. The ASU-Oregon State regular season finale March 8 in Corvallis will be at 3:30 p.m. and also shown on FSN Arizona.
No injuries to report, so that’s all for now. More to come Wednesday.
