With eight minutes left in Arizona State’s Pac-12 Tournament opening round game, they were up 14 on last place USC and headed for a quarterfinal rematch with UCLA, a team that they had just beaten in Tempe a few weeks before. The Sun Devils needed to win the Pac’s automatic bid in order to earn an NCAA Tournament appearance, but all things considered, the future looked reasonably bright. And then things drastically changed. Arizona State was outscored 21-4 over the final 8:29 of the game by the Trojans, and that seemingly bright future in the desert dimmed significantly. The blown lead a couple of Wednesday nights ago in Las Vegas did not simply mean the end to a season. It effectively meant the end to Herb Sendek’s career in Tempe. After increasing speculation about his position, Sendek was oficially fired on Tuesday. Doug Haller reports that the Sun Devils’ 42-point loss at Utah late in the season opened up the possibility of a change, and the USC debacle cemented it.

After Nine Seasons And Two NCAA Tournament Appearances, Herb Sendek Was Fired At Arizona State

First, let’s wrap up Sendek’s career in Tempe. Nine seasons; two NCAA Tournament appearances; a record of 154-132; a conference record of 72-90. He landed the best recruiting class in the history of the school in 2007 when he pulled James Harden out of southern California, beating out schools like UCLA and Arizona for the future superstar’s services. He brought five ESPN top 100 recruits to Tempe and won just a single NCAA Tournament game, a win over Temple in 2009. In a vacuum, none of that is particularly impressive. Okay, so let’s remove that vacuum and give you some context about Arizona State basketball. In 1978, this program, along with Arizona, joined the Pac-8 to create the Pac-10. Thirty-seven college basketball seasons have gone into the books since then, and the Sun Devils have posted conference records of .500 or better 16 times. Sendek coached nine seasons in Tempe and recorded six of those. Bill Frieder is the other coach with any significant recent success at Arizona State – he tallied six .500-or-better seasons in eight years (before resigning in the wake of a point-shaving scandal and numerous other off-court issues). In those 37 seasons, Arizona State has made the NCAA Tournament seven times: twice under Sendek; twice under Frieder, once under Rob Evans; and twice, way back in the early 80s under Ned Wulk.**

The point is this: There is not a history of success with Arizona State’s basketball program. What Sendek did in Tempe in nine years is basically as good or better than anyone has ever done there. It is a tough, tough job. Wells Fargo Arena is in need of an upgrade. Fan support is hit and miss. There is no natural recruiting base in Arizona. And even if there was, there is a big bad monster down the road in Tucson that is ready to swoop in and grab most of the best in-state talent. In order to succeed at Arizona State, a coach needs to be able to lure talented kids away from the fertile Los Angeles recruiting market. This means that not only are you competing with schools like UCLA, USC and San Diego State for that talent, but you’re also competing with every other school in the country that relies heavily on the area for recruiting. And believe me, there are a lot of those schools. Tempe does have one ace in the hole, though: USA Basketball is building a new complex just off campus, which will bring a whole lot of talent right through town and giving the next head coach who lands there easy access to some potential game-changing players.

If Only The Curtain Of Distraction Had Been Behind USC’s Hoop In The Second Half, Maybe Herb Sendek Would Still Have A Job

So, the question becomes who is next. The big name out of the gate is Duke assistant coach, Jeff Capel. Everybody on the planet with a source is saying that this is his job if he wants it, including Gary Parrish at CBS Sports. Capel previously coached at both VCU and Oklahoma before getting fired from the Sooners’ program. His best team was a 30-6 group that went to the Elite Eight with Blake Griffin. But he followed that up with a huge recruiting class that proceeded to go 27-36 over his final two seasons in Norman. There are other names out there that you can track down as viable options, but until and unless Capel decides he’s not interested, we can just assume he will be the next head coach at Arizona State. If that happens, Capel’s first order to business is to sit down with everybody in that program and make sure they’re still on board with the program. This is because if everyone returns, the Sun Devils have an opportunity to be a very good team in a down year in the conference. Next year’s rotation could be something along the lines of:

Starters

• PG Tra Holder, Soph.
• SG Gerry Blakes, Sr.
• SF Willie Atwood, Sr.
• PF Savon Goodman, Jr.
• C Eric Jacobson, Sr.

Bench

• PG Kodi Justice, Soph.
• SF Roosevelt Scott, Sr.
• C Connor MacDougall, RFr.

Add in a well-placed JuCo or graduate transfer and that’s a team that I would pick among the top four on talent alone in the Pac-12 right now. With the coaching change, however, there’s a good chance that many of those eight guys are at least considering other options.

In the end, that’s what makes the timing of this whole move slightly weird. Maybe Sendek isn’t the right guy for this job but he’s coming off a season in which his team’s production outpaced its expectations. And he had lined up a good collection of players to make a run next season. Arizona State basketball was seemingly in a relatively good place. It is hard to figure what athletic director Ray Anderson’s expectations were. Did Sendek, despite his accomplishments in Tempe, really get fired because of a bad eight-minute stretch against USC in the Pac-12 Tournament? Is it really worth endangering next year’s team for a big swing on two-time loser Capel? Are expectations at Arizona State for their basketball team maybe a little unreasonable? Stay tuned, but these are questions that won’t be answered soon. For this move to be a success, the next head coach needs to be able to bring long-term regular NCAA Tournament appearances to the desert, something that has never happened before in Tempe.

**Those teams back in the early ’80s were phenomenal: Byron Scott, Alton Lister, Lafayette “Fat” Lever. But that’s a story for another time.

AMurawa (999 Posts)

Andrew Murawa Likes Basketball.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2015 at 3:15 pm by Andrew Murawa and is filed under microsites, pac 12. Tagged: bill frieder, feature, herb sendek. arizona state, jeff capel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.