Because ASU beat Kansas on Sunday, moved up to 9-0 and leaped to No. 5 in the AP Top 25 … Sean Miller is a Sun Devils fan.
He won't be in two weeks, of course. The Wildcats and Sun Devils will face off on Dec. 30 at McKale Center in what might now be the most anticipated UA-ASU game in years.
But for now, Miller is high on ASU coach Bobby Hurley and the Sun Devils, in part because of the RPI boost the Sun Devils are giving the Pac-12.
“I think the days of cheering against another Pac-12 team ended many, many years ago,” Miller said Wednesday, during his weekly news conference at McKale Center. “I don’t know if everybody feels that way. It’s almost like it’s human nature that you don’t want certain teams to win because it almost puts more pressure on you. That’s not the case here with how I feel or how we feel.
“There couldn’t be a better moment for the Pac-12 than ASU’s win at Kansas. It gives our conference credibility. It allows more teams in our conference to get into the NCAA tournament, not just ASU but when you have an RPI as high as they have, it’s like a balloon. It pulls everybody else up in the league. And it gives our conference a chance to add that one extra team in March that maybe otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get. It helps us, it really does, because we play ASU twice.”
Miller said Hurley is “en route right now to be one of the coaches talked about as national coaches of the year because of what he’s done with their program. This is their third year. He’s played a tough nonconference schedule. It shows a lot of guts to play the schedule he’s played. You’re not going to win the game unless you show up in Phog Allen Fieldhouse and play them but they showed up and beat them. And that’s quite a statement.
“I think have a great team. They have those guards playing at a high level as far as I can see. But they have experience. I haven’t watched them a whole lot other than as a fan perspective but they beat Xavier and I do know Xavier’s team very well and I think they’re one of the country’s best teams. The fact that you can go to Kansas and Xavier (and win), I would imagine that ASU might be underrated where they’re at right now.
“Whoever plays them this year is going to have a tough game obviously. But it’s great for our conference. The more that we win as a conference is only going to allow us to have the most teams in postseason play and really that’s what we all should want.”
Miller said Rawle Alkins won the “gold jersey” as the best player in practice last week and that Alkins is ready to start. However, Miller said Alkins is still only about “60 percent” of the player he can become and said he wasn’t sure yet if Alkins would actually start Saturday at New Mexico (possibly since Brandon Randolph is also playing well).
“It’s just a matter of time before we make that move,” Miller said. “It’s not going to be at the expense of anybody who’s starting as much as putting our five best players out there at the opening tip and the players who deserve it.
"Rawle won the gold jersey in the five practices that he had. It wasn’t that we gave it to him as a charity. He clearly earned it and that’s quite a statement when you don’t practice for that long and you come in and in the five consecutive practices you end up being the best player that week. He’s a better player than he was last year and I’m anxious for him to get to that level.
“There’s gonna be a process for him. That process has already started. And I think that each game he’ll be more and more comfortable and we will be more and more comfortable as a team with him.”
Alkins has only played 22 minutes of one game so far this season, but Miller said he’s already brought some much-needed confidence that the Wildcats have begun to rebuild after their winless Bahamas trip.
“Part of it is guys believe in themselves and we talk about that we can be a good team,” Miller said. “I think we’ve been able to restore that belief and confidence because we’ve fought. We’ve made plays. We were down big in the first half against UNLV (41-30), and the game against Texas A&M could have gone either way a number of different times. They were undefeated at the time.
“And then against a talented group like Alabama, we made big plays down the stretch, we came through and I think each of the three games you could clearly point to improvement in a certain area. … we can also point to a lot of things we can do better especially on defense. We just can continue to grow and be better every day by working on it.”
Miller said the Wildcats were fortunate to have this week off while they finish up finals and other end of semester work. Sometimes they have crammed in a midweek home game during finals week.
“The focus right now is on our players’ academic lives,” Miller said. “That’s no different than any student that’s here. They’re finishing final exams, final papers. There’s a lot of stress, a lot of time spent and as much as you want guys to work ahead -- everybody’s done it in college – you wait ‘til the end and there’s some really long nights and heavy days where you’re focused on finishing that once class or raising the grades.
“We’re lucky we have the break that we do which really allows our players to focus on that.”
ESPN analyst John Gasaway says a team ranked in the Top 12 of the week six AP Top 25 poll has won the national championship every season but once since 1999.
This season's week six poll had Arizona ranked No. 23.
NBC's Rob Dauster had a look at Kansas after it lost to Washington and ASU.
