The ASU women’s basketball team will be hosting postseason play this week.
But it won’t be in the tournament it was hoping to participate in.
After being passed over by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee on Monday, the Sun Devils accepted a bid to play in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament and will first take on New Mexico State on Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. at Wells Fargo Arena.
"We’ve really just forced the issue [that we] have to play connected," ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. "We’ve built [this program] on extra effort and we’ve built it on great team chemistry. We’ve struggled with that this year, and we’re just really trying right now to finish the season with it to the best of our abilities."
This is ASU’s first appearance in the WNIT since 2004, where the Sun Devils lost at UNLV in the first round. ASU then made five straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2005-09, but a fifth-place finish in the Pac-10 and a loss to California in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament this season were not enough for the Sun Devils (17-13, 9-9 Pac-10) to earn a sixth straight invitation to the Big Dance.
But even though ASU will not be one of the 64 teams vying for a national title, senior guard Danielle Orsillo said there is still much to play for.
"I will fight until the end — until the buzzer goes off," she said. "I know we’re going to give everything we’ve got, because it’s now or never to prove ourselves. We’ve kind of been letting ourselves down for the last five months, so we’ve got a couple weeks to decide we’re ever going to just ‘get it.’"
Orsillo, who is ASU's leading scorer at 14.2 points per game, hopes to be cleared to play Wednesday after being diagnosed with a concussion following the Sun Devils' loss to Cal. The senior was elbowed in the head by Cal junior guard Rachelle Federico late in the first half, but she stayed in the game and did not notice concussion symptoms until a couple hours following the contest. Federico was called for a flagrant foul and ejected from the game because of the incident.
Orsillo has been limited in practice this week, but Turner Thorne said she also expects Orsillo to be available to play against NMSU.
NMSU is making just its fourth postseason appearance in modern program history and its first since 1994. The Aggies (18-13, 8-8 WAC) finished fifth in the regular-season conference standings before losing to Idaho in the WAC Tournament Quarterfinals.
Turner Thorne compared NMSU to Oregon, as the Aggies are a guard-heavy team that likes to play in transition and features no prominent players that stand over 6-foot-1.
"They’re a very good, aggressive offensive team," Turner Thorne said. "Their five starters can all score [and] they all look to score. Readiness and just great position defense is what we need."
Senior guard Crystal Boyd, who transferred to NMSU from Texas, earned second-team All-WAC honors last week after a season where she ranked fifth in the conference in scoring (15.5 points per game), third in rebounding (7.7 per game), first in blocks (1.6 per game) and second in steals (2.3 per game).
"She’s legit," Turner Thorne said of Boyd. "She’s like a top Pac-10 scorer. You can play great defense on her, and she’ll just drain a 17-footer in somebody’s face."
Should the Sun Devils get by NMSU, they would next face the winner of the contest between BYU and Pepperdine. ASU has already played Pepperdine once this season, where the Sun Devils defeated the Waves 62-52 in December in the championship game of the ASU Classic.
Round 3 of the tournament will take place from March 24-26, the quarterfinals will be played from March 27-29, the semifinals will be on March 31 or April 1 and the championship game will take place on April 3. All games will be hosted by one of the participating schools.
Other Pac-10 teams in the WNIT include Oregon, which will face Eastern Washington on Thursday, and Cal, which will take on UC Davis on Wednesday. Each team is on ASU’s side of the bracket but would not face the Sun Devils until the quarterfinals should they advance that far.
USC passed on a bid to the WNIT after not being selected for the NCAA Tournament despite finishing the season with 19 wins and a Ratings Percentage Index of 36.
Stanford and UCLA are the only Pac-10 representatives in the NCAA Tournament — the fewest bids for the conference since 2002. Stanford is the No. 1 seed in the Sacramento Regional and will first counter No. 16-seed UC Riverside on Saturday, while UCLA is in the No. 8 seed in the Kansas City Regional and will meet ninth-seeded NC State on Sunday.
Tempe will be playing host to first- and second-round games of the Sacramento Regional of the NCAA Tournament, with No. 4-seed Oklahoma State taking on 13th-seeded Chattanooga and fifth-seeded Georgia facing No. 12-seed Tulane on Saturday. The winners of those games will play on Monday for the right to advance to the Sweet 16.
Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu
