Odds: ASU basketball has all but cemented an NCAA Tournament berth

Riding a seven-game winning streak, the Arizona State Sun Devils are not only realizing their current status atop the Pac-12.

Their sweep of the Oregon schools last week, including a 77-72 victory against the then-14th-ranked Oregon Ducks on Thursday, has made them a near-lock to reach the NCAA Tournament.

ASU finds itself at 19-8 and 10-4 in conference play, and it appears a crash-and-burn in the final four games of the regular season and flame-out in the Pac-12 Tournament might not be enough to squeeze them out of the 68-team postseason tournament.

Here is how Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils are looking with series against the Los Angeles area schools and the Washington schools left in the regular season.

Odds looking good

Closing out January with a victory over the Arizona Wildcats was the jolt of life Arizona State needed.

That single win, the first of five Quadrant 1 victories so far, catapulted the Sun Devils from having a 19.2% chance of making the NCAA Tournament to a 39.5% shot.

The Oregon win this past week was another significant boost. According to TeamRankings.com, ASU’s chances of making the round of 64 jumped from a 79.7% to 97.9%. That was the fifth largest increase in odds this week.

That website’s prediction models favor the Sun Devils compared to others, rating them as a No. 6 seed and projecting they have a 15% shot at making the Sweet 16 and 99% shot of making the tournament field.

Middle-tier seed?

ASU has done enough to sneak into eight-seed territory, according to BracketMatrix.com, which averages the seeding of more than 100 brackets across the internet. Among the most noted bracketologists, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Arizona State as a No. 9 seed.

CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm had ASU as an eight seed, and so did NCAA.com’s Andy Katz, who last filled out his bracket before the Sun Devils beat Oregon State on Saturday.

Analytical ratings still not poppin’

The NET ranking, an analytic used to help the NCAA Tournament committee make their selections, isn’t so kind to Hurley’s team. It sits the Sun Devils at 41st in the country as of Sunday.

Arizona (8), Colorado (18), Oregon (20) and Stanford (33) all have more favorable NET ratings than ASU.

Ken Pomeroy, who has his own analytical rankings, likewise shows ASU as weaker than one might suspect. The Sun Devils are 55th heading into Monday.

The good news is ASU has done well in terms of quality wins. It has gone 5-6 in Quadrant 1 games, 4-2 in Quadrant 2 games and 10-0 against Quads 3 and 4 combined.

What’s left?

In the regular season, Arizona State has one Quadrant 1 game left (Saturday at USC), two Quadrant 2 games left (Thursday at UCLA and March 5 at home against Washington) and a Quadrant 3 landmine to close the year out (March 7 at home against Washington State).

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