By CRAIG MORGAN
FOXSportsArizona.com
March 4, 2011
One win won't change the perception of ASU men's basketball this season.
But two would have done the job before it ever started.
Following a 73-53 win over Oregon Thursday at Wells Fargo Arena, the Sun Devils head into their final regular season Pac-10 game Saturday against Oregon State with just three conference wins.
That's the fewest since coach Herb Sendek's first season in Tempe.
The message boards, chat rooms and comment sections are steaming with vitriol. Sendek can't recruit. The players have no heart. The seniors can't lead. ASU is and always will be a basketball outpost.
Losing produces near-sighted lenses.
"It's been a hard season for all of us," Sendek said.
There are well-documented problems with this program, to be sure. No matter what the local prep pundits tell you, Arizona is a barren desert when it comes to blue-chip recruits. In 32 Pac-10 seasons, only 12 Arizona products have earned All-Pac-10 honors, and that number is even lower in the nation's other major conferences.
Until this season, Wells Fargo had a greater seating capacity than storied Pauley Pavilion, making even the best crowds seem small.
And no matter what the Sun Devils do, there is always the perception that this is not an NCAA tournament-worthy program.
ASU entered the 2010-2011 coming off three consecutive 20-win seasons. Two players from the 2007-08 team (Jeff Pendergraph and James Harden) are in the NBA. And in the last two seasons, the Devils entered the final Pac-10 weekend with a chance to win the conference crown.
Yet the Devils made just one tournament appearance in those three seasons.
Despite sweeping Arizona in 2007-08 and finishing ahead of them in the conference standings, the Sun Devils went to the NIT while the Cats went dancing.
Despite a second-place conference finish last season, the Devils were snubbed again.
"For the most part, the committee does a pretty good job, but there's definitely some perceptions that exist with certain teams," said former ASU assistant and former Arizona interim head coach Russ Pennell. "A lack of consistent success at ASU has probably kept them out of the tournament when they deserved to be in, and that's because of perceptions."
Imagine how different that perception would be with two more wins
