 Ike Diogu gets around Kansas' Nick Collison in the 2003 NCAA Tournament.
(Ronald Martinez/Getty)
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By Noam Kupchan | March 28, 2007
Ike Diogu's first season at Arizona State proved the team's most successful as it resulted in an NCAA tournament bid and a major first-round upset.
After posting a 19-11 record during the regular season, the Sun Devils entered the 2003 tournament as a No. 10 seed. They would oppose No. 7 seed Memphis in the opening round. While Arizona State was happy to be in the tournament, there was much discussion surrounding Memphis' perceived slight at being seeded so low after a 23-6 season.
“Memphis was pretty upset about their seed,” Diogu said. "They thought they should have had a higher seed, and there was a bunch of talking in the newspaper about how they were going to trash us and how we didn’t really stand a chance.”
Trailing by one point at the half, the Sun Devils looked to get things going in the second half, and Diogu responded going 6-of-6 from the field and leading his team to an 84-71 victory. When all was said and done, the Pac-10 freshman of the year erupted for 22 points on 9-of-11 shooting, while at the same time helping to hold Memphis to just 36.2 percent shooting from the floor.
“One of the (Memphis) players said the probability of us beating them was the (the same as) a popsicle staying frozen in the Arizona heat,” Diogu said. “That was motivation for us that Coach (Rob) Evans used and we went out there and we beat them.”
Arizona State advanced on to the second round, which brought the challenge of the No. 2 seed, Kansas.
With the Sun Devils trailing 47-31 at halftime, they looked to regain the second-half magic they had against Memphis, but weren’t able to get back into the game and went on to take a 108-76 shellacking at the hands of the Jayhawks as Diogu’s 13 points and seven rebounds weren’t enough. Kansas went on to lose in the championship game against Syracuse.
