Frenzied USC comeback shrinks the bubble by one!

This was a very breezy and offensive game as the USC Trojans mounted an epic second half counter-offensive chipping away forcefully at the Arizona State lead. The Sun Devils were trying to hold on to their first conference championship, in a fight against both the determined Trojans and time, and the latter won!

This means a bubble spot disappears as it is handed off to the USC Trojans with their AQ (automatic qualifier). And this USC team could do some damage in the tourney. There is no OJ "Diva" Mayo, this is a more team-oriented team, and with more players being available than during most of the season, the Trojans can give many teams a headache. Especially considering their height and length.

Herb Sendek has exceeded expectations in his first two years at ASU, and perhaps made NC State fans wander. The conference championship would have been icing on the cake for this season, but you can't have it all.

And the sad nature of the current selection process is that a basketball team like USC would have been left out, while a handful of ugly Big10 teams would be in. At least in this case, USC took matters in their own hands :)

The Pac-10 needs new referees!

In the third time in a row, the Pac-10 zebras screw up and affect the outcome of the game, instead of letting the players decide the game on the court. This time the three blind mice called an over the back foul on Jeff Pendegraph on what looked like a reasonable putback in traffic. This silly call caused Pendergraph to foul out, and at the same time sealed the game for USC. And oh by the way, ASUs post-season future was on the line.

Memo to the Pac-10: Hire new officials!

USC at Arizona State

Despite the fact that ASU was beaten by the game clock at the 12 minute mark, they were able to put 80 points on the board and get a much needed win against the USC Condoms. Both teams had their "we were supposed to score?" stagnation moments, and the first half was about as exciting as reading the yellow pages while watching paint dry ;-)

But the second half picked up, and there was some excitment, drama, wild runs and swings, and a healthy dose of ...home-cooking that drove Floyd and his band crazy. Yet another physical game - what have they done to my Pac 10? You crazy slugfesters!

This "W" saved the day for Arizona State, and combined with the two home losses of the Cal Bears, it has put ASU in the Top 7. Next week will see a very important game as ASU will visit Oregon, with both teams desperate for the win and hoping to finish the season 50%, which will increase their chances of an at-large bid, since a number of people pay too much attention to the conference record, and not who did you play, where did you play them, who did you beat, and how well did you play.


Beaten by the Game clock
What does "beaten by the game clock" mean? When your points are fewer than the minutes played. For example, if at the end of the first half a team has 19 points, they were beaten by the game clock since 20 minutes were played.

Beaten by the game clock is a sign of a struggling offense and slugfest, because you have to be on pace to score less than 40 points for the whole game in order to be beaten by the game clock. Ouch!

UCLA at Arizona State

Who won this game? The clock did! That's right, 15 (game) minutes into the game, and both teams scored under 15 points! Oh boy! This is the Sad Ten! ASU was able to hold off UCLA, but a blown breakaway dunk ruined any chances the Sun Devils had to stay in the game. From that point onwards it was pretty much UCLA nursing the lead and the game was ZZZZzzZZZzz and over!

There was another sequence with back to back blown dunks on both ends. In fact super-athletic UCLA wing Westbrook missed at least two dunks during this game.

Not that it matters since UCLA got a comfy win. But it was also interesting that former UCLA great and FSN So Cal hoops analyst Donny Mac (Don Maclean) admitted that UCLA gets away with fouls on defense. This is really sad since the zebras are letting them get away with this type of dirty play.

Which is why Ben Howland will be ran out of town faster than you may think once he stops winning :) But will he stop winning? Not as long as he can get away with this "tough" multiple-fouls-per-possession defense :)

Arizona State at Arizona

On paper, this looked bleak for Arizona State. They had lost 23 of the last 24 games to the Lute Olson Meercats before the start of this season. Arizona was coming off a woodshed beating at Pauley and in theory they should have been primed to punish the next opponent.

And that's how it started, with a 22-6 lead, with Jerryd Bayless hitting just about everything he threw up. At that point, Herb "Mensa" Sendek took a couple of strategic time outs and was able to inspire his team to tighten up the defense and stay patient on offense.

With Bayless the only Zona player able to score, and Jordan Hill reverting to the quick two first half fouls "strategy", Budinger (who looked like he belonged to a beach volleyball team last night) and J-Mac were unable to provide some offense. The value of Nic "Hoops" Wise was evident in game #1 since his season-ending (?) surgery. With the Michigan kid transferring back to Michigan, Arizona was a bit thin on the back-court.

The game was played like a Big Ten game, except without the intensity, which is a bit strange, since this is supposed to be a hated and heated rivarly ;-)

The box score looked like an AAU game, with Bayless and Pendergraph (not to be confused with GoneZaga's Pendergraft) both getting career highs above the high 30s.

With Arizona players not named Bayless unable to score, and unable to defend Sendek's half court offense, ASU slowly but steadily got back in the game, and then took the reigns, and finished off with a much needed victory.

This is even more important for Sendek in the eyes of Sun Devils fans, as the ASU won only 1 out of the previous 24 games against Arizona. Sendek has managed to sweep Arizona twice this season.

Arizona fans will point out that in game #1 Bayless DNP, and in this game, Nic Wise DNP due to injuries. But Arizona State fans will point out that ASU was playing with super-frosh James Harden as a shadow of his regular self due to a bad case of the flu. But Harden was able to play and make enough plays to allow his teammates to win the game.

Another item that will cheer ASU fans was the determination and energy of Pendergraph on both sides of the floor. If he plays like that every game, and Harden plays to his usual self when he recovers from the flu, the team could make an NCAA run!

Arizona State at USC

The battle of complicated defenses and offenses took place at the new shiny Galen center in Los Angeles. What turned the game for good was the 4th foul called on SoCal super freshman star James Harden, at which point the USC Trojans took the game over and grabbed the W.

Daniel Hackett showed some onions by trying to play despite his injury, and his minutes and commitment were enough to help his teammates delivery the Condom fans a much needed home win.

Arizona State is who we thought they would be. Fans who do not follow the Pac-10 closely, or just look at conference standings, without drilling through the records, thought they were a top 25 team at some point. Not so! As we all know now, Xavier is one of the top 10 craziest teams this year, so blowing them out like that was not such a big deal.

Where are they going from here? USC has a reasonable chance for an NCAA tourney tid (thanks to OJ Mayo as a ratings grabber, and their Durant-killah game last year). Meanwhile ASU should be happy and excited for a CBI or NIT bid. Expecting an NCAA bid would be a sign of irrational exuberance at this point. However, because the Pac-10 is so tough, and because of the Pac-10 tourney, they could still pile up enough quality wins (or win the whole thing) to find themselves in the NCAA tourney. But don't count on that!

Arizona State at UCLA

As I noticed when watching the ASU at Stanford game, Arizona State reverted back to the 2006-2007 during the second half, and had a hard time getting their mojo back. Their top 25 ranking was undeserved, as the polls are mechanically moving teams up and down depending on their record, but typically do not pay attention to who they played, where they played and how they played.

And how they played at Paulie Shore (ha!) Pavilion was horrible. UCLA grabbed the game by the reigns and never let go, giving Sendek more headaches, and left scrambling for different line-up combinations.

As long as UCLA is allowed to foul multiple times per possession, their defense is too disruptive for most teams and they are hard to beat. But if the game is called as it is supposed to, then UCLA is much more likely to lose - just like they did vs USC :)

Washington State at Arizona State

It was a tale of two "frustrations" and a comeback. At the start of the first half, Herb Sendek's mad scientist match-up zone gave the Cougars headaches. But as the half progressed, the Cougs started to "solve" the match-up zone.

The second half started in similar fashion but with the roles reversed. Arizona State was frustrated by the Wazoooo defense, and couldn't hit the desert from the Grand Canyon ;-)

Arizona State tried to make a comeback, and they came close to winning the game on the last play, but their prized freshman James Harden was unable to score on the tough Cougs d-fence, giving the Cougs a nice road win and giving them a +3 in the Tim Floyd Pac-10 standings.

As mentioned last week, Arizona State was not as good as their record looked, and that was evident in the way they melted down at Stanford last week, and their inability to win a game at home this week - although they did face a solid resurgenent Washington team and a tough team to beat in the Cougs. The NIT/CBI may look not enough given their record, but when you dig into their record, and also look at where they were last year, the NIT/CBI would be a great improvement year to year.

Herb Sendek got Jay John fired!

I had a draft post that never got around to posting saying how the success of Herb Sendek at Arizona State was going to get Jay John fired in the spring.

Well, it looks like the Oregon State AD beat me to it by a few months! Poor Jay John is gone! The first strike of course when Tony Bennett and his neo-slugfest style of play had a great season last year. But one could point that the Tony Bennett success was built upon the Dick Bennett years, so it wasn't as if Tony had a one-year wonder.

So that bought Jay John some more time. But then comes Herb Sendek at Arizona State. In year #2 they got from a perennial bottom feeder to sitting on top of the Pac-10, and landing a top caliber recruit.

So now the pressure reaches boiling point. With fellow Pac-10 bottom dwellers WSU and ASU ranked in the top 25, the situation looks very bleak at OSU, and all of a sudden, the NBA mentality kicks in, and it's bye bye Jay John!

Arizona at Arizona State

The Duel in the Dessert started like a Missouri Valley conference game, and it was only very late in the first half that the game picked up in terms of basketball play on offense. The script of the game was different this time.

For one thing, Arizona did not fall behind, but rather started the game ahead and kept the lead throughout the game. For another thing, Arizona State actually made a comeback, instead of having their traditional meltdown when facing off the Lute Olson Cats.

James Harden was almost unstoppable in the second half, Kevin O'Neill refused to change his defensive schemes, and ASU slowly managed to get back in the game and force an overtime.

The overtime was a sea-saw battle and Arizona State ended up getting a storming the court win over their "rivals" who had won 24 of the last 25 "rivarly" games before tonight.

Kevin O'Neill continued with his unpredictable rotations, with Kirk Walters and Jamelle Horne seeing no court time at all. Infact some could argue that O'Neill was ...zany as he asked Zane Johnson to remove the red shirt and put on the blue shirt. All that so that he played five minutes in the first half? As you may recall Lute lifted the redshirt off Kirk Walters a few years ago.

The strange thing is that both Walters and Horne would have been good matchups, especially Walters going against Pendergraph and House of Duke Boetang. Horne is fast enough that he could match up with Shipp or whoever else was playing the undersized four.

Herb Sendek has indeed surprised many people with this quick turnaround. A lot of people thought that it would take him 3-4 years and there were no guarantees he would be able to do it. Of course the season is far from over, but for Arizona State standards, he already has three conference wins, and *gasp* a 3-0 conference start. When was the last time ASU won more than 3 conference games in a whole season?

If you missed this game, you can catch a repeat on Fox College Sports or FSN-Arizona (for those with the regional FSN satellite package). Speaking of TV, this is the January 2008 college hoops tv guide.

Oregon State at Arizona State

The battle for the #9 spot in the Pac-10 took an interesting turn as Arizona State managed to handily beat the Beavers but also beat the Run and Gun Ducks two days earlier. It looks like Oregon State might be all alone at the bottom of the Pac-10 this season.

And they may not be a bad team even! With CJ Giles just recently added to the team (eligible after mid-season transfer) and very promising power-freshman Omari Johnson recovering from an injury, they look like they could improve. The problem is that they are climbing a hill backwards in the snow and driving rain that is the Pac-10 of 2007-2008. CJ Giles was taken out of the game by early foul trouble and that did not help the Beavs at all.

Herb Sendek's success so far on Year #2 may have sealed Jay John's fate at Oregon State. Not only did Tony Bennett managed to revitalize Washington State, but now in just two years Herb Sendek has taken another perennial Pac-10 patsy and turned it into a good team. Meanwhile Jay John has been at OSU for a while now, and he's still working uphill.

Arizona State may have had its best game of the year last night, with super-frosh James Harden taking over the first half and big man Jeff Pendergraph taking over the second half. In between, the "Jeans" point guard provided some stability and the rest of the players filled in the gaps to give the Sun Devils a 2-0 start in the Pac-10.

Speaking of James Harden, I think he is really Julius Hodge after a facelift or two, and a perimeter shot ;-) There's no way a 17yo freshman plays with such basketball savvy and weighs 220lbs at his height. He must be Julius Hodge! NCAA, investigate this please ;-)

But can Arizona State continue this or is it fool's gold and their early success a result of their schedule? It may take another two weeks to find out, as next week they face in-state rival Arizona. Beating Arizona maybe another barometer game as ASU has been "owned" by the Lute Olson Wildcats in the last few years.

LSU vs Arizona State

Finally a fun game! As Pete Gillen puts it: "they put baskets to score, they put scoreboards to score". The game was not designed to be a slugfest! The game should be Wooden's basketball, not Ben Howland's and Saluki's Slugsketball!

Both the Tigers and the Devils are young teams, with the Tigers missing three key pieces and having had even more inexperienced players on the court. But despite all that, the Tigers broke free from their slump and managed to make a comeback and send the game into overtime thanks to a clutch three by coveted juco #5 (Marcus Thornton).

Apart from this being a fun see-saw game to watch, it showed that these two teams have a lot of P (potential) for this season but also for future seasons. Even if the current season ends up without post-season play for either team, they could make giant leaps in terms of development, and make a big splash in the 2008-2009 season.

I am particularly bookmarking the LSU Tigers, if Tasmin Mitchell returns, this team could bite a lot of SEC opponents thanks to their athleticism and talent, and could sneak into post-season play.

Arizona State vs Illinois

The Arizona State players were zoned out, not because they were playing zone defense, but because they looked really zoned out when Illinois kept them scoreless for a few days. Illinois fans have a lot to celebrate, they may not have Derrick Rose and Eric Gordon, but it looks like they have a team with a capital T, and a rotation that apparently can go 15-deep or so.



The Sons of the NBA game, with McMillan and Michael Jordan's son playing was nowhere near a close game. Defense took over at times, and defense prevailed.

Herb Sendek may have improved the talent level of the team, but this was only game one of the season for them, and it showed. Will the struggles of last year continue or was this just growing pains of the first game of the season against a solid and deep Illinois team? The answer, or at part of the answer, will be known by Wednesday night, where the Sun Devils will have played against Princeton and then against LSU or Chaminade. More on this game from a local impartial observer, the Honolul Advertiser.

lllinois was cruising along, and now they are getting ready to beat Duke! Go Bruce Weber! Go Fighting Illini! Beat the Pukies! It will be interesting to see how the Illinois depth can affect the Dookies. Bruce Weber doesn't often get a chance to play the big wigs, and this is a great chance for him to get a notch against Coach K. This will be an interesting battle from a coaching perspective, the unassuming Average Joe Coach (Bruce Weber) vs the Pope of Basketball Coaches (Roach K).

More on the Illinois team and a preview of the Illinois vs Duke Maui game at the Illinois Rivals page, and also check FightingIllini.com.