Even before his Wildcats dropped out of the Top 25 polls in historical fashion Monday, coach Sean Miller was bracing for a perception change.
After losing three games in the Battle 4 Atlantis, the Wildcats became the first team in 31 years to drop from No. 2 to all the way out of the poll. Doing so also snapped their streak of 100 straight appearances in the AP poll that dates back to the beginning of the 2012-13 season.
And, in a punch to the gut that’s closer to home, ASU (6-0) jumped into the AP poll at No. 20, marking the first time since March 2009 that the Sun Devils have been ranked and the Wildcats unranked.
Now Arizona has seven more nonconference opponents scouting them, starting with Long Beach State on Wednesday, and their eyes may be open a little wider.
“We came here the No. 2-ranked team. Everybody knows that,” Miller said after UA lost to Purdue to finish in last place Friday. “But now it’s different for us. I don’t know if everybody will look at us as the same team that maybe they looked at before.”
Well, Long Beach State coach Dan Monson says he’s still bracing for the same team.
Monson brought the 49ers into McKale Center three times during UA’s three-digit streak of AP poll appearances — in 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2015-16 — and lost by an average of 23.7 points.
“They concern us,” Monson said. “They have some growing pains going on but … it’s bad news for us to go to Arizona. We’ve been there three or four times and it’s never been good for us. We’ve never kept it competitive.”
It’s also true that Arizona has won 42 straight nonconference home games and has reached the second weekend of the NCAA tournament in four of the past five seasons.
Overall, the Wildcats still have a proud history in both the AP media poll and USA Today coaches polls. In the coaches poll, which has an extra postseason ranking every season, the UA had a streak of 104 straight appearances before it dropped out from No. 4 on Monday.
The Wildcats have not been unranked in either poll since the end of the 2011-12 season, which they finished by losing to Bucknell in the first round of the NIT.
So there’s all that history, too. Miller referred to it last week when he spoke of how other teams in Atlantis came gunning at the Wildcats.
“It’s not just what we do. It’s also the past,” he said. “A lot of Arizona teams have been good and when you have an opportunity to play a program that’s been good over a long period of time, it means something when you can beat us.”
Rim shots
Long Beach State (3-4) is coming off a 10-day road swing in which it lost at Oregon State on Nov. 18, played at West Virginia on Nov. 20 and then in an Orlando tournament over Thanksgiving. The 49ers, who beat the Beavers during a rematch in Orlando but lost 85-80 to Nebraska on Sunday, returned home Monday morning and were scheduled to fly to Tucson on Tuesday afternoon.
- ASU’s Tra Holder was named the Pac-12’s Player of the Week after scoring 40 points to lead the Sun Devils over Xavier in the Las Vegas Invitational championship game. Holder, named the MVP of the Las Vegas event, averaged 25.5 points while shooting 55 percent from 3-point range in ASU wins over Kansas State and Xavier.
