Molly Miller<\/a> has her Sun Devils in the dance as a No. 10 seed with a\u00a0 24-10 overall record and 9-9 mark in Big 12 play. ASU faces Virginia in a First Four matchup Thursday in Iowa City, Iowa. The winner will play No. 7 seeded Georgia on Saturday.<\/p>\nVirginia started the season hot, posting a 13-3 record before reaching the meat of conference play and finishing 19-11. Its 11-7 conference record was good enough for the No. 8 seed in the ACC tournament, earning a bye to the second round before losing to No. 9 seed Clemson.<\/p>\n
While the Cavaliers are riding a three-game losing streak, their last win came against Louisville, a No. 3 seed in March Madness.<\/p>\n
ASU went undefeated in nonconference games and didn\u2019t pick up its first loss until Jan. 3. After recording victories\u00a0 over tournament teams Colorado and Oklahoma State, the Sun Devils traveled to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament, where they were positioned right on the bubble for an NCAA bid, needing some important wins to lock up a tournament spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After taking down Arizona for the third time in 2025-26, ASU picked up a much-needed win over Iowa State, a game that seemed to do enough to punch its ticket to the tournament.<\/p>\n
Facing eight NCAA Tournament teams in the regular season, ASU had the 65th hardest strength of schedule in the country and still reached some impressive milestones. The Sun Devils had their best non-conference record in program history, started the season 15-0 and Miller recorded more victories during her first season in Tempe than any other ASU women\u2019s basketball coach in their first season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now the Sun Devils are poised to make their return to the NCAA Tournament against the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n
Washenitz has a special connection to Virginia. She grew up playing travel ball with the Cavaliers\u2019 star player, junior guard Kymora Johnson, who scored a team-high 19 points per game this season.<\/p>\n
Washenitz plays for ASU now, but her career started at Pitt, where she spent three seasons playing in the ACC. Having the opportunity to face off against a former conference opponent in Virginia has Washenitz excited.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be really fun to dabble back into ACC play,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot different, but because the Big 12 is so versatile and there\u2019s so many different styles of play, we\u2019re ready for any opponent, any sort of style of play.\u201d<\/p>\n
ASU athletic director Graham Rossini knew that Miller had the ability to bring this kind of success to Tempe when he hired her from Grand Canyon University, where her 2024-25 team finished 32-3 and qualified for the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"USATSI]()
Arizona State women\u2019s basketball coach Molly Miller speaks to members of the media as the countdown to the NCAA Women\u2019s Final Four begins at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix on Feb. 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at her track record dating back to high school and she\u2019s won in every level,\u201d Rossini said. \u201cShe\u2019s been a consistent winner. She\u2019s been a tremendous leader. So we were excited about her bringing in that level of pedigree into our program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rossini was pleased to see Miller\u2019s vision come to fruition in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe X-factor was them coming together as a unit,\u201d Rossini said. \u201cThe chemistry, the culture, the connective tissue that they built. All those things came together in a wonderful way this season. Excitement from Day One, and that continues today as we get ready to go to the NCAA Tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading ASU to its first tournament appearance in six seasons, Miller credits those on the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels good, but this moment belongs to our players,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThey\u2019ve poured their hearts into this season and I couldn\u2019t be prouder of them. I\u2019m excited for the university. I\u2019m excited for the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Echoing Rossini\u2019s confidence, Miller said she had a special feeling while putting this roster together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a couple of moments in time where I believed that this team would be special,\u201d she said. \u201cThe first one was when I got to know and recruiting each and every one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a very particular (type of) student-athlete that we\u2019re looking to bring here to springboard this thing. It wasn\u2019t just about being a good basketball player, it was about being a good human being, having high character, being two feet in and coachable. So when we got that, I knew that this could be a special season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller may be happy and proud of reaching the NCAA Tournament, but the first words she spoke at her post-selection show press conference made clear that she was already moving on from that excitement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I can\u2019t take my mind off of Virginia scout right now,\u201d she said. \u201dThat\u2019s at the forefront of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on Cronkite News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.<\/p>\nFeature photo courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEMPE \u2013 Sitting squarely on the bubble, the ASU women\u2019s basketball team watched Sunday\u2019s NCAA Tournament selection show…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-776575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}