TEMPE — As the Arizona State Sun Devils reeled off a school-record 15 straight wins this season, coach Charli Turner Thorne thought she might have one of the best teams in school history.
Then ASU lost leading scorer Dymond Simon to a knee injury she sustained at Stanford on the regular season's final weekend.
It was a double blow to the 19th-ranked Sun Devils. They have lost both games since Simon was hurt, then were dropped to a sixth seed in the NCAA tournament's Trenton Regional.
To top it off, ASU will have to face 11th-seeded Georgia in Duluth, Ga., not far from the Lady Bulldogs' campus in Athens today at 9 a.m.
"Right now, it's just hard because we want to progress in the tournament, and we had what I thought was probably my best team ever, and then we get hit with the injury," Turner Thorne said this week. "I'm still digesting that, if I'm going to be honest with you. Because it's not our goal to make the tournament. It's our goal to advance in the tournament."
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That's why Turner Thorne and her players aren't celebrating a school-record fifth straight trip to the NCAAs. They've made it seven times in nine seasons under Turner — four more than in the 15 years before she arrived.
"We're just beyond that," she said. "We want to be contenders. We don't want to be participants."
During the long win streak, the Sun Devils looked like possible contenders for their first Final Four berth. Their 15th straight victory was a 63-41 drubbing of No. 9 California on March 5 in Berkeley.
Next up was a duel with second-ranked Stanford, the Pac-10's dominant power. But Simon hurt her knee in the first half, and the Sun Devils fell 77-68.
A week later, they lost the Pac-10 tourney opener to USC 70-65 — on the Trojans' home floor.
ASU had hoped to draw a No. 4 seed or higher in the NCAA tournament, and the Sun Devils thought the tourney selection committee might place them in Los Angeles for the first two rounds.
Instead, Cal drew the fourth seed and a trip to Los Angeles. The committee, taking Simon's absence into account, shipped Arizona State out to Georgia.
"I do think that they considered it, big-time," said Turner Thorne, who noted that the Sun Devils may have changed the committee's minds with a victory or two in the Pac-10 tourney. "Woulda, coulda, shouldas — I'm trying not to go there because it's hard. We worked hard. You just never expect anything like that to happen."
Simon, named to the All-Pac-10 second team, led ASU in scoring at 13.8 points per game and was second to fellow guard Briann January in assists and steals.
Simon, a junior from Phoenix, will miss the NCAAs with a knee injury for the second time in three seasons. In her absence, the Sun Devils will need former Catalina Foothills High School star Kate Engelbrecht and others to turn up their games.
"Obviously, when you lose somebody of that magnitude, people have to step up," Turner Thorne said. "Other people have to fill that void. Great teams do that. That'll be the test of this team."
If ASU wins, it would face third-seeded Florida State or 14th-seeded North Carolina A&T in the second round.
It's a tough challenge for the Sun Devils. But ASU may find itself in a different spot next year, when it hosts the first and second rounds of the NCAAs.
