Herb Sendek was pondering the power of zero. Until last Sunday, it was the number of Pac-10 wins garnered by his Arizona State basketball team. With the Sun Devils threatening to become the first team in conference history, as the Pac-10, to go winless in conference games, Sendek was asked last week how he was approaching his first year in Tempe.
"Right now we have a team that's taking Algebra 1," he said. "Sometimes on Thursday and Saturday nights, we have to take a test in Algebra 2. Some nights, they mix in some questions with trig in it.
"It doesn't mean our students aren't doing their homework and preparing and working hard, or we're not doing a good job teaching. We haven't been able to pass a test that's more advanced than we've been at this point."
The first Algebra 1 test came last Sunday night. The Sun Devils stunned No. 22 USC 68-58 before a frenzied crowd at Wells Fargo Arena. In the final minute, Fox Sports Net analyst Marques Johnson joked on-air that the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter was aligned with Mars.
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Arizona State fans — an impressive 6,758 in force — stormed the court as if ASU had won an NCAA championship. After the game, Sendek thanked fans for not staying home to watch "Desperate Housewives."
"We have passed tests before," Sendek said Tuesday. "We may not have gotten 100 percent right. We may not have gotten an A.
"Our guys were making great progress, in many instances coming close to playing to present potential. In many instances, our guys were winners. I was more aware than anybody we weren't winners on the scoreboard."
Sendek has no illusions about tonight's game against Arizona, however. It might be another trigonometry exam.
"Let's face it, we're going to have to be incredible on Sunday," he said.
Sendek looks — and sounds — like a math professor. He's skinny and quiet, and paces his words with caution. If Lute Olson is the homecoming king and Washington's Lorenzo Romar the most charming, then Sendek would be the quiet kid in the corner. Or the teacher's assistant who proctors tests.
Sendek was the valedictorian at Penn Hills High School in Pittsburgh, earning a 4.0 GPA. He earned the prestigious Carnegie Merit Scholarship and enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University, where he played basketball.
One week into practice during his senior season, Sendek was unceremoniously cut. He began coaching as a volunteer assistant at a Philadelphia high school, and graduated from college with an industrial management degree.
He finished in 1985 with a 3.95 GPA, summa cum laude.
"Jeff (Pendergraph) always comments on the usage of his words," freshman guard Derek Glasser said. "A lot of guys look at him with blank faces.
"He's incredibly intelligent. He really knows a lot about a lot of things."
When Sendek was hired away from North Carolina State in the off-season, he was smart enough to see the task he had in front of himself.
The Sun Devils have had only one winning conference record since 2000.
With the Pac-10 having seven different teams ranked this season, ASU picked a tough year to rebuild. Two of Sendek's three best returning players, guards Kevin Kruger and Bryson Krueger, left the team before the season began. The former joined his father, Lon, the head coach at UNLV; the latter was booted for a drug and firearms arrest.
Glasser decided to attend ASU late in the recruiting period after planning to walk on at USC. Now he's the team's starting point guard and leader in minutes played.
Sendek, a man-to-man defense coach his entire career, installed a zone defense. The Princeton-hybrid offense he ran at N.C. State was tweaked, slowed. The Sun Devils have tried to stay close against teams with better talent.
"Sometimes it's not prudent and not fair to throw certain players into the system," said associate head coach Mark Phelps. "We want to position our current team as best we can to be successful on the offensive end and to execute."
It seems to be working. The Sun Devils have kept 12 of their 15 conference games within a dozen points, six of them within five points.
With every loss, the Sun Devils grew frustrated. But, Sendek said, they never stopped working hard.
"We're not investing any time worrying about effort or attitude. We have a level of expectation, and there really is no other option available," Sendek said. "We're not allowing ourselves the luxury to flinch or become despondent. We have too much to do to allow ourselves to allow those kinds of things to require a great deal of time or energy.
"We get out every day and we work as hard as we can. It's as simple as that. I have not spent a lot of time and energy, nor have I had to, trying to be Dr. Phil."
Sendek's hard work has landed plum high schoolers James Harden, Jamelle McMillan and Duke transfer Eric Boateng, who will be eligible next year. The foundation for his program is being installed, even though the coach will miss the postseason for only the second time in his career.
Other conference coaches have been impressed nonetheless.
"My gosh, I don't think I've ever seen anybody do a better job of maintaining that competitive level going through adversity as Herb and his Arizona State team," USC coach Tim Floyd said.
Said UCLA's Ben Howland: "Arizona State has got to be the best 1-14 team in the history of college basketball."
Last week, Sendek wouldn't get into that argument.
"I don't know if we're better than our record shows," he said. "We are what we are."
The USC game didn't change that.
"Our record is what it is," he said Tuesday. "We could have won some games. What team in the country can't say that?
"Conversely, there's probably some games we won — think back to the Iowa game — that we easily could have lost. But who can't say that?"
There's the math thing again. Converse? Most coaches probably think of a shoe.
Tuesday, Sendek was asked about resting his team. He talked about his team's consistency, before finally boiling it down like a math problem.
"That answer," he said, "is a function of a lot of different variables."
A summa cum laude graduate, coach Herb Sendek uses a mathematical approach to solve his Sun Devils' problems and prove to the rest of the Pac-10 that his formula will add up to wins.
The Pluses:
• Herb Sendek is a good coach, and he's smart – 3.95 GPA smart.
• New players in 2007-08 will include California high school standout James Harden and former Duke recruit Eric Boateng.
The Minuses:
• ASU lost two of its three best players heading into this season.
• Sendek's man-to-man defense was scrapped when players couldn't execute it.
• Sendek's efficient Princeton-style offense is averaging 20 points lower at ASU than at North Carolina State.
1-14
Arizona State's Pac-10 record in 2006-07
7
The number of Pac-10 teams ranked in the top 25 this season – making life even harder for ASU
