Arizona State's NCAA Tournament Chances Remain Slim After Loss
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TEMPE -- Bobby Hurley's 11th season as head coach of the Arizona State men's basketball program began with much promise, as the Sun Devils started out non-conference play with a 9-2 mark. They have since gone 3-10.
The eight weeks of struggles have been as the result of numerous factors working together - the ultimate frustration has been the inability to close out games that they were in position to take over in.
Now, the Sun Devils are locked in a virtual one-track scenario to make a return to the NCAA tournament - Arizona State on SI explores those chances below.
Arizona State's Tournament Chances Are Slim
One of the most blatant signs that the clock might be ticking for Arizona State is that the team is no longer mentioned as a "long shot" in the ESPN bubble watch. This came in lieu of the loss to Colorado and lends credence to the notion that the paths to reach the 68-team field are severely narrowed.
Popular metrics site TeamRankings gives Arizona State a modest 2% chance to reach the field - four wins or less over the remainder of the season will not give the team enough cushion to make a real tournament case. The 18 win mark appears to be the starting point to give them a fighting chance to be selected.
19 wins would all but shoe them into the field, although securing seven wins is incredibly unlikely, as it would either require the team to run the table over the remainder of the regular season, or to make a deep run in the conference tournament come March.
Arizona State Will Receive Opportunities to Boost Resume
The Colorado game was seen as a potential inflection point in this season, as Arizona State moving to 13-11 would have lent them more of a runway heading into the final seven games of the regular season.
The Sun Devils have several games that should be attributed as winnable games in the three weeks ahead, as they host Oklahoma State on Tuesday, face Utah in a return game in Tempe on February 28, and take to the road to face Texas-based conference foes in TCU/Baylor in between the two stretches.
Arizona State will surely receive three distinct opportunities to pick up quad one wins over Texas Tech, Kansas, and Iowa State - although the viability to actually pick up a win against an elite opponent is another topic of discussion.
Read more on the bold strategy that head coach Bobby Hurley employed with comments on 1/21 here, and on why Arizona State may have saved the season with the win over Cincinnati on Saturday here..
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Kevin Hicks is an Arizona State alumni and now serves as the Arizona State Beat Writer On SI.