Arizona State earns first NCAA Tournament bid since 2014

Arizona State will be dancing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.

The Sun Devils were selected into the tournament as a No. 11 seed in the Midwest Region.

Arizona State will face fellow No. 11 seed Syracuse in a play-in game on Wednesday, March 14 in Dayton, Ohio, with the winner advancing to face TCU in the round of 64.

The NCAA revealed the entire field of 68 teams during TBS’ NCAA March Madness Selection Show on Sunday to the delight of head coach Bobby Hurley.

“We started our journey this year, our goal, our mission was to try to get into the NCAA Tournament,” Hurley said.

The Sun Devils (20-11) began the season as one of the hottest teams in the nation. They burst onto the scene with a 102-86 win on a neutral court over then-No.15 Xavier to move to 6-0. That win only looked more impressive as the season went on, as the Musketeers entered Selection Sunday with a No. 3 ranking.

Just more than two weeks later, ASU upset No. 2 Kansas on the Jayhawks’ homecourt, 95-85.

Finishing the nonconference slate at 12-0 and earning a No. 3 ranking, ASU suffered its first loss to No. 17 Arizona to open Pac-12 play and went 8-10 to finish ninth in the conference before losing to Colorado in the Pac-12 Tournament opener on Wednesday. That gave the Sun Devils their fifth loss in the final six games.

Under the selection committee’s new quadrant system, which doesn’t weight recent results more than the games in the first few months of a season, ASU went 3-4 in quadrant 1 games. It also went 5-5 in quadrant 2 games, 7-2 in quadrant 3 games and 5-0 in quadrant 4 competition.

Arizona State is ranked 57th by an average of three results-based metrics and 46.3 by an average of three predictive-based metrics.

Follow @AZSports