On March 14, 2013, at the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas, the ASU men's basketball team lost to UCLA. That evening, the Sun Devils also lost any hope of making the NCAA tournament and were forced to settle for an NIT bid, where they proceeded to lose a second round game at Baylor.
Herb Sendek and company did, however, have an offseason win of sorts when redshirt sophomore point guard Jahii Carson announced he would stay at ASU for one more year.
Carson said this will be his last year at ASU, something that Sendek said he has known since last year. That said, Carson has one goal in mind.
"To win," Carson said. "I want to win more than 20 games, win the Pac-12 Championship, the Pac-12 (regular) season conference, get Pac-12 player-of-the-year, All-American honors and get us a deep run in the tournament. I think that would be a nice way to end my last year."
Carson said his experience and hard work in the offseason (he only took four days off all summer) has added to his confidence from last season. He said he knows what coach Herb Sendek expects from him this year and that he has a statement to make in every single game the Sun Devils play.
The team is now "a veteran team," Carson said, and he believes his teammates "understand what we need to do and need to accomplish to be able to be one of the top teams in the country."
Winning this season might prove more difficult, though, as the Sun Devils have beefed up their out of conference schedule and will face stronger competition in the Pac-12 as well.
Sendek said the idea behind facing tougher out of conference teams was to make sure that if the Sun Devils are on the "proverbial bubble" a tougher schedule might make the selection committee look more favorably at ASU.
"In recent years, (the committee) has given very strong signals that the weight of your non-conference schedule is very important," he said. "In some cases, it seems to me it may even be more important than the composite of your entire schedule."
As far as Pac-12 competition goes, Sendek said he thinks it will be tougher than it was last year, if not tougher than it has been in several years.
He said the days of winning the Pac-12 and not getting an NCAA tournament bid (a la Washington in the 2011-12 season) are over.
"I think those days are behind us," he said. "I think we're back to the days we were a few years ago when this conference was littered with lottery picks. ... I think the league, clearly, will be among the very best in the nation."
For now, Sendek said he is trying to get the team to focus on one of the Sun Devils' core values, the idea that "the path is the goal."
"Everybody tries to look into their crystal ball to see what things will look like in March," Sendek said. "So we're totally immersed in this segment of our season which is preseason practice. ... Like all teams on Oct. 3, we aspire to be in the tournament. We aspire to have a great season."
Reach the reporter at npmendo@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @NPMendoza
