OKLAHOMA CITY - The NCAA basketball tournament is littered with upsets each year and this year will be no different.
Just look at the tournament's opening-day action: Central Michigan, an 11-seed in the West Region, beat sixth-seeded Creighton; Southern Illinois (11-seed), BYU (12), Western Kentucky (13), Holy Cross (14) and Utah State (15) all gave their higher-seeded opponents all they could handle Thursday.
However, ASU's 84-71 victory over seventh-seeded Memphis, a three-point favorite, was no upset. The Sun Devils are the better team and they proved it Thursday at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.
In a conference call on Monday, Memphis coach John Calipari expressed his team's frustrations with being awarded a No. 7 seed. The Tigers and their fans felt a higher seed, possibly a No. 4 or No. 5, would have been appropriate.
"If you don't judge us on our RPI, if you don't judge us on our last 13 games when we went 12-1, if you don't judge us on road games when we won seven in a row and if you don't judge us on our wins over Syracuse, Illinois and Louisville, what did you judge us by?" Calipari said of the NCAA Selection Committee's reasoning.
Even after the Sun Devils had dismantled the Tigers 52-38 in the second half, Calipari was still upset with the seed and the draw of ASU.
"We want to get the seed we deserve, and then we'll move on from there," he said of his team's future endeavors into the NCAA Tournament.
"This is exactly the type of team we did not need to face in the first round. It's almost like [the Selection Committee] purposely picked the team that would give us the most trouble."
It's probably true: If Memphis had received a four or five seed, and faced a 12 or 13 seed, the Tigers would be moving onto Saturday's second round - even as poorly as they played against ASU.
But that would have been a waste, because in the end, the Selection Committee's error - among others - was not seeding the Sun Devils as the seven seed.
ASU coach Rob Evans played it cool after the program's first game in the Big Dance since 1995.
"There are no upsets in college basketball," he said." It's the team that plays the best on that given night."
ASU, without a doubt, played their best Thursday. The Sun Devils shot 69.6 percent in the second half and 52.5 percent overall; they committed just nine turnovers and posted seven steals; all despite one-sided whistle blowing from the guys in stripes.
It all boils down to a test of former Sun Devil coach Bill Frieder's prediction skills. Earlier this week, Frieder said the winner of the ASU/Memphis game would beat No. 2 seed Kansas and move on to the Sweet Sixteen.
We'll see if that upset, which would accurately define the word, comes to fruition Saturday.
Reach the reporter at christopher.gabel@asu.edu.
