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.**

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1. In a twist on his usual Power Rankings, Luke Winn decided to rank the eight most likely bracketbusters. Winn’s criteria were that a team had to be an 11 seed or higher with only two could be from power conferences and two had to be seeded between 13 and 16. His top two picks are Tennessee and Iowa, which should not be too surprising although Iowa was already eliminated last night after losing to Tennessee in the play-in game last night. We are not sure how much the first round opponent factored into it. The top six teams in these rankings are all teams that we considered as legitimate threats of advancing when we made up our bracket earlier this week.
2. As great as the TV highlights of magical March moments are we sometimes forget how great the writing about it can be. One example of that is SI’s longform piece on the 1989 Georgetown–Princeton game. For those who do not remember the game or were not aware of its significance it was one of the most memorable games in NCAA Tournament history. The recent piece does contain a bit of hyperbole, but does an excellent job recounting many of the more important details. If you are looking for a great account out of that game from the scene, check out Alexander Wolff’s column on it from the March 27, 1989 issue of Sports Illustrated.
3. Jeff Eisenberg has a great article on Bill Frieder, who announced just before the 1989 NCAA Tournament that he would be leaving Michigan for Arizona State after the season. Rather than wait for the season to end, Michigan athletic director Bo Schembechler fired Frieder immediately and replaced him with Steve Fischer, who went on to lead the Wolverines to the national title. Can you imagine the circus there would be today if something similar happened?
4. There has been a lot of talk about fans rushing the court recently, but we had not heard of anybody infiltrating the court. That is until we heard about a Virginia fan, who worked his way into the Cavalier bench and became part of their celebration the ACC Tournament title game (more detailed version here). On the surface this is certainly an amusing story, but we are guessing that the officials at Virginia and the ACC find it much less so. We would guess that security will be tighter at future ACC Tournaments.
5. Everybody is focused on the NCAA Tournament, but Oregon picked up a significant piece for next season when JaQuan Lyle announced that he was committing to play at Oregon next season. With Lyle committed, Myles Turner is the only significant recruit who has yet to commit (Turner is #2 in ESPN’s rankings and the only other uncommitted player in the top 100 is ranked 99th overall). As Jeff Borzello notes, Lyle’s recruitment has been complicated (involving him backing out of a commitment to Louisville) and there are still some academic questions that need to be answered, but Lyle should fit in well at Oregon.

One of the things we want to do as part of this summer-long series is to take a look at where each program is at this point in its history, what realistic expectations fans should have of their program, and what it would take for the program to take the next step on the ladder of college basketball’s hierarchy.

Arizona State Has Had Limited Success In It’s Basketball History, But The Past Two Years Were Among The Worst Seasons In The Program’s History

For Arizona State, the last two seasons have really been a low point for the program. While ASU has not historically been a paragon of NCAA basketball success, they’ve at least been a middle-of-the-road team in their conferences on a regular basis, dating all the way back to the Border Conference in the 1950s. But the last two seasons have been the worst pair of consecutive seasons since a 1970 record of 4-22 dragged down the seasons around it. Yet, at the same time, only twice in the school’s history has its basketball program won 20 games or more in three consecutive seasons, a feat Herb Sendek’s teams completed just two seasons ago (the other streak occurred between 1960 and 1963). In fact, only one other time in its history has the team posted even back-to-back 20-win seasons (1979-80 and 80-81, behind guys like Byron Scott, Lafayette “Fat” Lever, Kurt Nimphius and Alton Lister). In short, the Sendek era has represented (just about) the best of times and the worst of times in Sun Devil basketball.

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Past Imperfect is a new series focusing on the history of the game. Every Thursday, RTC contributor JL Weill (@AgonicaBoss) highlights some piece of historical arcana that may (or may not) be relevant to today’s college basketball landscape.  This week: in a week BYU and San Diego State meet for a top 10 matchup, a look at two key figures in each school’s basketball history.

It’s June 1991, and Steve Fisher is in a good mood, a really good mood. It may seem odd, given he’s just emerged from coaching Michigan to a 14-15 record, his first losing season in his brief stint as a head coach. To add to it, he’s just graduated his leading scorer and captain. And yet, here is Fisher, serene and smiling in his bespectacled, professorial way. If it looks as if he knows something the rest of us don’t, that’s because he does.

What Fisher knows is that he’s just signed the best freshman class in school history – maybe in NCAA history. Combined, Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King will go on to win 97 games for the Wolverines, coming within reach of back-to-back national titles. It’s also a crew that will have most of its wins expunged. But Fisher doesn’t know any of that yet. All he knows right now is that after a trying season, the cavalry is coming in baggy shorts and tall black socks, a group of young men who will change college basketball and the coach who brought them together. Forever.

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It’s July 1991, and a 7-foot-6 Mormon basketball player – one of the tallest men on the planet, probably the world’s tallest Mormon — is giving up the game that is going to make him a millionaire someday. Well, maybe not exactly giving up, because what Shawn Bradley is really doing is taking a break to spread the word of God. For two years.

That he’s just finished an All-American freshman season in which he set an all-time record for blocks in a game is immaterial right now. The game-changing giant is heading to Australia to take a break, not knowing if he’ll ever play the game he’s loved his whole life again. It will be a confusing, often frustrating time, but one that will change him. Forever.

* * *

In many ways, Fisher is an unlikely spark for the basketball revolution that’s coming. A former high school coach in Park Forest, Ill., Fisher was on the slow track. For 10 years an assistant coach, Fisher was never the lead guy. Like all college assistants, he was the brains and hard work behind the scenes. He went on recruiting trips, sure, but the glory, and of course the headaches, ultimately went to the man in the seat beside him.

Interim coach Steve Fisher led Michigan to the 1989 championship.

Then came March 1989, and the man in the seat beside him, Bill Frieder, was fired for taking another job before Michigan’s season has come to an end. The NCAA tournament is one day away and now Fisher is the one responsible for wins or losses. Of course he is nervous. So what does the accidental head coach go out and do? He wins the whole damn thing. In a matter of three weeks, there’s more glory than Steve Fisher ever imagined, and all after just six games. It’s a story too remarkable to be believable, but believable because it is true. Six games and Fisher had just reached the pinnacle of the job he’d only just joined by accident. Six games and a mountain of glory you can only tumble down from.

Because what can Steve Fisher do to follow up six-and-oh my God?

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