LAS VEGAS β When Sean Miller said repeatedly earlier this week that he knows Santa Clara is βgoing to be a well-coached team,β it was probably wasnβt just out of respect for his longtime coaching buddy.
Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek, after all, handed him some pretty painful losses as ASUβs head coach.
In 2009-10, Sendekβs Sun Devils beat Millerβs first UA team in McKale Center, 73-69, all but ensuring the Wildcats would break their NCAA tournament streak of 25 years (which is now just a 10-year streak, since the 1999 appearance was vacated because of NCAA violations).
As it turned out, the Wildcats finished the season 16-15 and didnβt go to the NIT either. (They told the CBI they werenβt interested).
In 2011-12, ASU beat Arizona 87-80 at Wells Fargo Arena, sending the Wildcats to 21-10 in a weak season for the Pac-12 and prompting Solomon Hill to correctly declare "we just popped the bubble."
In 2013-14, the Sun Devils knocked off a UA team ranked as high as No. 2, winning 69-66 in double overtime. The win caused so much distress in the UA locker room that no Wildcat players were allowed to speak with media afterward and Miller's postgame address was cut off after three minutes and 11 seconds (roughly one-fifth the time of a typical Miller postgame interview).
βOur offense is continuing to put more and more pressure on our defense,β Miller said after that one. βYou can only guard so well. We missed a ton of free throws and, heck, weβve missed a ton of free throws all year.
βEventually itβs going to run its course and youβre going to lose because weβre leaving too many points on the table. In the first half we had five or six shots that were the best that we can generate and we missed all of them.β
In 2014-15, ASU again won at Wells Fargo Arena, this time 81-78. It was the Wildcats' third and final loss of the regular season, but enough to knock them down to a No. 2 NCAA tournament seed in the West. That ultimately provided an opening for Wisconsin to slip into the West as a No. 1 seed -- and we all know what happened when the Badgers met UA in the Elite Eight for the second straight season.
βSometimes as a game plays itself out, and you deep down feel like you didnβt deserve to win, and really thatβs how I felt,β Miller said after that ASU game. βWe broke down way, way too many times.
βASU was the better team today. They played harder, moved the ball better, executed, and they earned the right to win.β
However, Sendek was fired about six weeks after that game, then took a year off while preparing to coach again. He was hired at Santa Clara last March ... and here he is tonight, facing Miller again at the Orleans Arena.
Here's the school-produced game notes for Santa Clara and Arizona.
All our related pregame coverage is attached to this thread.
