Rough road lies ahead for tourney-bound Sun Devils

 by Gina Mizell
 published on Thursday, March 20, 2008

Bettina Hansen / THE STATE PRESS

CLAP OF ENCOURAGEMENT: Teammates cheer from the bench during ASU’s basketball game against Stanford on Jan. 20 at Wells Fargo Arena.

Bettina Hansen / THE STATE PRESS

TURNER AROUND: ASU women’s basketball coach Charli Turner Thorne has guided her program to four consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament.

Bettina Hansen / THE STATE PRESS

LOCKED IN: The ASU women’s basketball team travels East to College Park, Md., this weekend to play Temple in an opening-round matchup of the NCAA Tournament.

The ASU women's basketball team knew going into Selection Monday that it would be playing in the NCAA Tournament.

But the Sun Devils (21-10, 14-4 Pac-10) had to wait for more than a week to find out where exactly they would be placed in the field of 64 teams.

Now that No. 6-seed ASU knows 11th-seeded Temple will be its first test on the road to the Final Four, the Sun Devils can breathe a sigh of relief before heading to College Park, Md., for its first round match up with the Owls.

"We're just really excited to finally know who we're playing and where we're playing," senior guard Reagan Pariseau said.

ASU spent most of spring break analyzing itself since it had no opponent in front of it. The Sun Devils worked on fine-tuning the specific aspects of individual players' games and then had a full scrimmage on Sunday.

"We got the dust off and we got a game under our belt during our time off," junior guard Briann January said. "We're working on things that we need to as a team and focusing on ourselves. And now we have an opponent to shift that focus on."

Now that the Sun Devils have drawn the Owls (21-12, 12-3 Atlantic 10), it's back to their normal routine of preparing for an opponent this week.

The Sun Devils were off Tuesday but practiced Wednesday. They will have one more practice today before departing for College Park on Friday.

Peeking ahead

With only one day off between first and second round games, ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said the Sun Devils have also spent this week getting ready for potential second-round opponents, especially No. 3-seed Duke, who is likely to win out over No. 14-seed Murray State.

By heading to the East Coast this weekend, ASU will definitely lack any sort of home-court advantage since Temple's location of Philadelphia is much closer to Maryland than Tempe. The same will hold true against a possible meeting with Duke, which is located in Durham, N.C.

"That's why we travel," Turner Thorne said. "We go to Cancun, we went to North Carolina. It won't be any big thing."

Being shipped across the country is something the players are also embracing.

"It will be fun," Pariseau said. "I like traveling. I've never been to College Park so, hey, a new place. We're excited."

The Sun Devils might actually get some support from the local fans in College Park in a possible second-round game against Duke. Maryland and Duke are bitter rivals, so the home crowd will likely jump on the bandwagon of any team playing the Blue Devils.

Playing an underdog role

While the Sun Devils are in their fourth-straight NCAA Tournament, it's safe to say the expectations for this season's team doesn't quite match up with the ones from last year.

Last season, the Sun Devils earned the No. 3 seed in the Greensboro Regional and charged through the bracket before eventually falling to Rutgers in the Elite Eight.
The 2007-08 squad has a tougher road to the Final Four this season and was even named a "Team Worse Than Its Seed" by a writer from ESPN.com.

But Pariseau still holds the same high standards for ASU going into the tournament, even if it is flying under the radar.

"Last year I think there was a bit more pressure, but this year not as much," she said. "As people see us, we're the underdog for what we want to accomplish."

The Pac-10 Conference only has three teams in this year's NCAA Tournament, with California snagging the No. 3 seed in the Greensboro Regional and Stanford getting the No. 2 seed in the Spokane Regional. The trio of teams is the lowest number of bids to the Big Dance the conference has received since 2003.

The Pac-10 has also had some recent changes in the coaching ranks. UA fired coach Joan Bonvicini on Monday after 17 seasons, while UCLA coach Kathy Olivier resigned on March 11 after 15 seasons at the helm.

Reach the reporter at: gina.mizell@asu.edu.