Arizona State Bedevils Kansas for Second Straight Year

Go figure.

By all but the most myopic Pac-12 fans' reckoning, this season looks to set up as somewhere between exasperating and just plain sucky.

Name a favorite -- any favorite -- and prepare to hold your nose:

• Oregon? Ask Texas Southern how much they like Eugene.
• Arizona? There's hope, if they can just keep beating the posse.
• Washington? The most experienced team in the country needs a roadmap the moment they cross the halfcourt line.

 

That kid's Huskies' material.

At least he knows how to get open.

 

So, how do the vaunted Kansas Jayhawks manage to lose to a predicted Pac-12 middle-of-the-packer like Arizona State?

For the second season in a row, yet.

Maybe it was the Sun Devils' hair-on-fire approach to their task that caught the Jayhawks napping. After all, how could Kansas think they'd be defeated by a team that ...

• Shot a measly 8-21 from beyond the arc,
• Went a putrid 20-32 from the stripe, and
• Pissed away 11 turnovers?

 

Kansas went 15-16 from the line, so the ASU student section's Curtain of Distraction wasn't a factor.

 

Then again, once the Jayhawks got caught up in the chaos, they turned the ball over a crazy 16 times.

Arizona State matched them on hustle stats and damn near everywhere else, and even though it took them the whole damn game, they finally took control at the end of their 80-76 upset:

 

Becoming the AP poll's No 1 club is like holding a hot potato this season:

• First, Gonzaga assumes the mantle by directly displacing Duke;
• Then, Tennessee upends the Zags with solid D and a torrent of treys;
• And now, the Jayhawks will be handing off the top spot to someone.

Odds are, it'll be the Dookies again after their methodical 69-58 destruction of Texas Tech.

 

Meanwhile, now the Sun Devils have given hope to their Pac-12 brethren that a few quality brownie points may be on offer to whomever beats them in league play.

It may be the only way the conference gets more than 2-3 invites to the Dance.