Arizona State’s Jayden QuaintanceBruce Yeung/Getty Images
9 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 2. Kansas; 8. Iowa State; 13. Cincinnati; 14. Houston; 16. Texas Tech; 21. Baylor; 24. BYU; 37. Arizona State; 42. West Virginia
Also Considered: Arizona, Utah
Biggest Change: An Arizona Shuffle
As of Sunday morning, KenPom, BPI and Torvik all would’ve had you believe that Arizona was way more deserving of a spot in the field than Arizona State. The Wildcats’ average ranking was 23.3, while the Sun Devils were all the way down at 61.7, not particularly close to top 50 in any of those metrics.
By golly, though, the NET ended up being the rational voice in the room for a change, debuting 7-1 Arizona State at No. 33 and 3-4 Arizona at No. 65.
In defense of Arizona even getting considered for a bid at this point, at least all four losses were Quad 1 results, and the neutral losses to Oklahoma and West Virginia in the Battle 4 Atlantis were both close games. Moreover, when the Wildcats do win, they destroy their “competition,” presently boasting a plus-11.3 average scoring margin in spite of their sub-.500 record.
As mentioned previously in this Big 12 summary, though, their nonconference resume after not winning the Battle 4 Atlantis is kind of atrocious. They must beat former Pac-12 rival UCLA on Dec. 14 in order to avoid entering Big 12 play with an 0-5 record in the games that mattered. If they do lose that one, it’s probably going to take at least a 12-8 record in Big 12 play to salvage a bid.
Elsewhere in the desert, ASU had a much better showing in its MTE, beating both New Mexico and Saint Mary’s in winning the Acrisure Classic. That’s a Q1 and a Q2 win for a team that already had solid victories over Grand Canyon and Santa Clara on neutral courts, with merely a road loss to projected No. 1 seed Gonzaga on its list of losses. (And they were tied with the Zags in the final five minutes of that eight-point loss, making that result infinitely more acceptable than Baylor’s complete no show in Spokane to start the season.)
We’re still tempering expectations for the Sun Devils a bit in putting them in the field as a No. 10 seed. They did, after all, barely win their home games against Idaho State and Cal Poly and were nowhere near the projected field a month ago.
Given what we’ve seen thus far, though, Arizona State in and Arizona out is the only logical conclusion.
