(Photo: Brooke Faber/WCSN)
Arizona State women’s basketball is going dancing, and the Sun Devils won’t have to stray far from home—at least not for the first two rounds.
The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament field was announced on Monday afternoon with Arizona State drawing a 3-seed.
The 3-seed means that they will host a sub-regional in Tempe, giving the Sun Devils the opportunity to play both their first and possibly second round games in Wells Fargo Arena should they advance.
The Tempe sub-regional consists of 3-seed Arizona State facing 14-seed Ohio and 6-seed Texas A&M taking on 11-seed Arkansas-Little Rock.
Home-court advantage is quite the perk with some teams traveling thousands of miles for their games, but the Sun Devils almost didn’t even have the opportunity to host due to scheduling conflicts with the gymnastics team, but a joint effort from the Pac-12 and the ASU Athletic Department was able to move the meet in order to make way for the sub-regional.
“I have to say, just an amazing thank you and our deepest gratitude to our administration, to President Crow, to Ray Anderson our athletic director and to the Pac-12 conference because they collectively made this happen,” said Coach Charli Turner Thorne. “Two months ago, we thought that we would be in the running to host but we were sure that we weren’t going to be able to, that we were going on the road. I think our administration saw that we were going to qualify and made it happen.”
Arizona State has been exceptional at home, going 28-3 in Wells Fargo Arena over the past two seasons. All three of those losses came to teams that were either ranked at the time or were ranked immediately following the game.
“We have very loyal fans that come to our games and have been supporting us, and just being able to have the home court advantage is awesome…we couldn’t have asked for anything more,” said junior guard Katie Hempen.
Arizona State will tipoff at 3:30 p.m. against Ohio at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe following the conclusion of the Texas A&M-Arkansas-Little Rock game.
“We haven’t hosted since 2005 in the regionals, so it’s a great opportunity for us that we plan to take advantage of,” said Turner Thorne.
