Happy holidays Sun Devils, it’s time for conference play. The Sun Devils’ Big 12 journey tips off on New Year’s Eve when it travels to face BYU, marking the start of what is set up to be a difficult road for ASU to navigate.
The Sun Devils will enter conference play with a 9-2 record, their only two losses coming against teams currently ranked in the top 15. They’ve proved through their difficult nonconference schedule that they can compete in conference play.
In the preseason Big 12 coaches poll, ASU was picked to finish 12th out of 16. They’ve bumped themselves a bit over that with their nonconference slate, and they are currently 7th in the conference metrically, per Kenpom.
As of Dec. 17, Joe Lunardi, an ESPN sports analyst, has ASU in the ‘Last Four Byes’ of his Bracketology, essentially having the Sun Devils six spots away from the tournament cutoff.
Before the season began, many believed the Big 12 was the best basketball conference as five of the top ten teams in the preseason AP Top 25 poll were members of the Big 12.
“The Big 12 is the best basketball league in the country,” said ASU head coach Bobby Hurley in a preseason press conference, per PHNX Sports.
Now, in week eight, only Iowa State and Kansas sit in the top 10. The nonconference hasn’t been kind to some Big 12 teams. The University of Arizona went from No. 10 in the preseason poll to 6-5, unranked and tied for the worst record in the conference. Kansas State has trailed off in recent weeks, and Baylor and Houston, while still ranked, haven't lived up to expectations so far.
The consensus now is that the Southeastern Conference is the best conference in college basketball headlined by Auburn and Tennessee. The SEC currently has 10 teams ranked in the top 25 and Lunardi’s ‘Bracketology’ has 13 of its 16 teams making the tournament. Lunardi put eight Big 12 teams in, good for the third highest by conference.
But, by no means is the Big 12 a cakewalk. It’s still one of the deepest conferences in the country. The NCAA Evaluation Tool proves that. The NET is used as a sorting tool by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee to figure out what teams make the big dance using a quadrant system. Quadrant one wins alongside quadrant three and four losses are highly considered at selection time.
Luckily for the Sun Devils, they have zero losses in quadrants two, three, and four, and they aren’t going to get many games outside of one and two in the Big 12. Of the 20 conference games they'll play, 17 of them will be in quadrant one or two, giving the Sun Devils many opportunities to prove they deserve to be in the tournament in March.
Edited by Henry Smardo, Sophia Ramirez and Natalia Jarrett.
Reach the reporter at jkmccar2@asu.edu and follow @jackmccarthyasu on X.
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Jack is a junior studying sports journalism with a minor in business. This is his first semester with The State Press. He has also worked at his high school paper.
