ASU women's basketball will be playing in a postseason tournament this week, just not the one it had hoped to be in at the beginning of the season.
ASU recently accepted an invitation to the Women's National Invitation Tournament, where the team will face Rice University on Friday at 9 a.m. MST in the tournament's first round in Fort Worth, Texas. The team is guaranteed to play at least one more game after playing Rice regardless of the result.
While the Sun Devils fell short of the ultimate goal of making the NCAA Tournament, they remain excited for the opportunity to continue their season and compete for a championship.
"We were definitely hopeful that we would get an opportunity to play for a championship in March for our very young and very much developing team," head coach Charli Turner Thorne said. "I am so impressed with their enthusiasm, I'm so impressed with their willingness to get better and get very excited to play for this championship."
Turner Thorne voiced disappointment that her team fell just short of qualifying for the NCAA Tournament with an 11-10 record but complimented the quality of competition her team will face in the WNIT.
"It is very frustrating looking at who got in the NCAA Tournament knowing that if we would have won maybe one or more games, even two, for sure we would have been in, given the resumes that got in," Turner Thorne said. "There are teams in this tournament that are better than some of the teams in the NCAA Tournament."
The Sun Devils will be making their 20th postseason appearance in 21 years, but this will be their first appearance in the WNIT since 2012.
Junior guard Taya Hanson said she was happy about the opportunity to continue the program's legacy of participating in the postseason.
"We are so thankful that we can just play games in March, I mean that's what our program has done continuously throughout the years," Hanson said. "We're just super excited. We've had a great week of practice and we're ready to play."
The team wasn't sure if it would be selected to participate in a postseason tournament but practiced in the days leading up to the selection announcements as if its season would continue. The team has used the extra practice time to further mesh together, Hanson said.
"We didn't even know that we're going to be able to play, but we still wanted to come out and be aggressive, just bring a sense of urgency together," Hanson said. "We are playing — playing off each other, playing with each other — and it just was really good for our team. We showed a lot of toughness this weekend to bring that into these games."
Hanson said the team is excited to play in a postseason atmosphere that mimics the NCAA Tournament in terms of scheduling and in-game intensity.
"It's like you're playing to the death, and there is a lot of fun in that," Hanson said. "When that sense of competition is on the court, you just play with much more aggressiveness and that much of a will to win."
Sophomore forward Eboni Walker said the team is "honored to even have more games, especially during this time." She hopes the team uses the opportunity of playing in the postseason to generate positive momentum heading into the offseason, as does Turner Thorne.
"I feel like this team, you know, really wants to be there," Turner Thorne said. "I know they really want to be there and I know they want to play. They feel like they can still play better basketball, and they want a chance to finish strong."
Reach the reporter at ltochter@asu.edu and follow @Leo_Toch on Twitter.
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