Unless it’s turnovers, the Arizona State men’s basketball team seems to hit a new low every week. Perhaps the worst came Saturday at Washington State, when the Sun Devils scored just eight points in the first half, eventually falling 72-50, their seventh conference loss of 15 or more points.

Entering Thursday night’s home game against UCLA, the Sun Devils (8-19, 4-11 Pac-12) dribble among the worst teams in college basketball’s power conferences. They haven’t won back-to-back games all season and already they have secured their third season with at least 19 losses in coach Herb Sendek’s six years.

Despite the struggles, ASU’s administration supports Sendek, who captured Pac-10 Coach of the Year honors just two years ago. In December, the Arizona Board of Regents approved an extension that keeps Sendek in place through 2016, an odd move considering the state of the program. Last season, the Sun Devils finished with 12 wins. This season they might not reach 10.

“I’ll take a 15-13 record if (the opponents) that beat us leave the court, saying, ‘Man, that was hard,’ ” ASU President Michael Crow said. “So when you go to Los Angeles and lose by 20 points to two teams, that’s not fun for anybody. It’s not fun for the team, it’s not fun for any of us. … (But) Herb’s a good coach, and I have confidence that he’s going to find the right combination. He’s struggling right now. Even he would tell you that.”

Vice President of Athletics Lisa Love offered similar thoughts this week on her weekly radio show.

“I think there was a lot of hope with Herb on board that we were headed in a particular direction and we were all very excited, and then lately it’s been really not easy,” she said on KTAR-AM.

In recent conversations, Love said she asked Sendek: How did we get to this place? And what’s the plan moving forward?

“It’s one thing to just wring your hands in frustration and just howl at the moon, but there’s another part to say, ‘He is an incredibly talented and bright basketball coach, and he just didn’t all of a sudden wake up dumb,’ ” Love said. “This guy has got amazing capability.”

A slump such as this usually happens after a coaching change. Entering Wednesday, 19 teams from power conferences had four or fewer conferences wins.

Among them, 11 had coaches in their first or second seasons. Only five — ASU, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Villanova and Nebraska — had coaches who had been at their respective schools for five or more seasons.

The Sun Devils have had adversity. Last season, illness and injury forced Sendek to use 11 starting lineups. This season, the issues have come at point guard. Touted freshman Jahii Carson did not qualify academically, although the NCAA has allowed him to practice. His main backup, sophomore Keala King, was dismissed in December for unacceptable conduct.

Partially as a result, ASU has lacked ball security, committing turnovers at an alarming rate.

The Sun Devils average 63.3 possessions per game, and 26 percent of those end in turnovers, an obstacle too difficult to overcome on most nights.

Still, Sendek is encouraged. ASU is one of just nine Division I teams that does not have a senior. Next season, Carson will be eligible, along with transfer guards Evan Gordon and Bo Barnes.

The Sun Devils also will add freshman big men Kenny Martin (Glendale Raymond S. Kellis High) and Eric Jacobsen (Chandler Hamilton) as well as guard Calaen Robinson (Tempe Corona del Sol).

“We have the right approach,” Sendek said. “We have great confidence moving forward that we are going to win more games. We always have, and that’s our expectation in the future.

“We have a good feeling about the plan that we have, and we have good confidence that we know what we’re doing and we’ll move it forward that way.”

Arizona State coach Todd Graham said Tuesday that he has not reinstated suspended defensive end Junior Onyeali.

Asked if he expects Onyeali back for spring practice, Graham said ‘No.”

Asked if he expects Onyeali back at all, Graham said, “I don’t know, it’s up to him. We’ll see.”

Onyeali, the 2010 Pac-10 Defensive Freshman of the Year, is considered ASU’s best pass rusher.

Former coach Dennis Erickson suspended Onyeali from the Dec. 22 MAACO Las Vegas Bowl after the two had a heated exchange in practice.

On Jan. 4, Graham, just a few weeks after taking over the program, announced Onyeali was suspended indefinitely for “not meeting the high standards of the Sun Devil football program.”

“We’ve given him a plan of improvement, which is going to be very tough to do,” Graham said. “We’re hopeful that he’ll do all that.”

Graham said Onyeali is working out on his own, but he still receives academic support.

“We want him to make it, but we have to have accountability,” Graham said. “It’s not like (a slap on the wrist) and tell him, ‘Don’t do that again.’ ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t work. There has to be accountability, and then you have to earn your way back.”

For Pac-12 men’s basketball, these are troubled times. Read the national scribes. Listen to the television voices. The conference, home of storied programs such as UCLA and Arizona, is a punching bag, a head-scratching collection of mediocrity.

In three weeks, on Selection Sunday, a committee will select the field for this season’s 68-team NCAA Tournament. According to bracketologists — those who specialize in predicting the field — it will not be a good day for the so-called “Conference of Champions.”

Most say the Pac-12 will receive three bids, but if the conference’s top teams tank the next two weeks, or if the wrong team wins the Pac-12 Tournament, two are possible. Maybe even one.

Since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, no power conference — a group that includes the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Pac-12 — has received just a single bid.

“To me, (the Pac-12) looks like a bunch of NIT teams, every one of them,” said Jerry Palm, one of the more-successful bracketologists, referring to the consolation tournament that selects among those not invited to the NCAA event. “And to make it worse, they keep beating each other up.”

The collective resume is ugly: During the non-conference season, Pac-12 teams went 2-31 against teams in the Top 50 of the RPI rankings, a system used by the committee to determine teams’ overall worth. The conference’s most-impressive wins: Oregon State over Texas and Stanford over Colorado State.

As a result, no Pac-12 team has been ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 in 11 weeks. It doesn’t help that three Pac-12 teams — Arizona State, Utah and USC — are considered among the worst major-conference teams in college basketball.

The slide comes at a bad time for the Pac-12. Over the past two years, Commissioner Larry Scott has improved the brand, attracting national appeal. Just two months ago, the Pac-12 played its first conference championship game in football. Last week, construction started on the studios that will serve as headquarters of the new Pac-12 Network.

But the momentum has skipped basketball. Here are some reasons:

Early departures

Over the past four years, NBA teams have drafted 21 Pac-12 players who had not exhausted their college eligibility. Currently nine NBA players, including former USC standout DeMar DeRozan and UCLA guard Jrue Holiday, still would be eligible had they not left school early.

This isn’t just a Pac-12 issue — the Big 12, in fact, has lost 22 players with eligibility — but its impact cannot be understated. This season, with early entries Malcolm Lee and Tyler Honeycutt, UCLA could have been a national contender. The same is true for Arizona if Derrick Williams had stayed. USC would have been stronger with big man Nikola Vucevic.

The underlying problem: Pac-12 teams have not recruited well enough to compensate for these losses.

According to recruiting service Rivals, the conference produced just three top-10 recruiting classes from 2008-10. UCLA had the nation’s best class in 2008, but because of transfers and early NBA departures, only one (guard Jerime Anderson) of the five-player class remains with the team.

The Bruins have yet to recover.

The UCLA factor

Every conference has anchors. The ACC has Duke and North Carolina. The SEC has Kentucky and Florida. The Pac-12 has UCLA and Arizona, but lately, UCLA hasn’t been UCLA.

Since ending their run of three consecutive Final Fours in 2008, the Bruins, by their standards, have struggled. They finished 26-9 in 2009 but lost in the NCAA Tournament’s second round. Since then, they have won 52 games over two-plus seasons. By comparison, Minnesota, hardly a national power, has won 55.

This year, the Bruins’ only chance to participate in March Madness is to win the Pac-12 Tournament, receiving the conference’s automatic NCAA bid.

“I don’ t think that’s absolute, but I think it’s a factor,” said Fox Sports West analyst Don MacLean, a former Bruins standout. “When UCLA is rolling, regardless of how the rest of the conference is doing, people think, ‘The Pac-12 is doing well this year.’ And I’d even put Arizona in that category as well.”

Lack of respect

This season’s results are difficult to defend, but Arizona State President Michael Crow still thinks the Pac-12 lacks national respect, a point he has brought up to Scott.

“When I talk to Larry, I tell him, ‘You got to get us to the point where in the national press we get some modicum of respect,’ ” Crow said. “We need to do a better job at projecting Pac-12 basketball.”

Last season, Arizona’s Williams went overlooked for most of the season. Some called his Feb. 19 ESPN performance against Washington his national coming-out party, a fact Scott brought up at Pac-12 media day. This season MacLean wonders if East Coast media have paid enough attention to notice that some Pac-12 teams have improved since the disastrous non-conference season.

Even so, Scott remains encouraged, especially with the conference’s new media deal about to kick in, one that will put Pac-12 basketball on ESPN more than 40 times next season. He also points out that several schools recently have recruited well. According to ESPNU’s 2012 rankings, Arizona has the top class, and UCLA and Colorado and among the Top 25.

“This year appears to be an anomaly,” Scott said. “I think we all feel very good about the caliber of our prospects next year when our network launches. There will be a lot of excitement just in terms of the quality of the brand, the caliber of our coaches and the recruits we have coming in.”

Selection Sunday

Since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, the Pac-12 has received two bids four times. No other power conference has done so once.

In 2010, regular-season champ California and conference-tournament champ Washington received the conference’s only two bids, but ASU coach Herb Sendek makes what he considers an important point:

“Everyone said our league was down that year, and by some metrics it was,” he said. “But the reality was, Cal got in and did well in the tournament. Washington made a heck of a run and I think represented our league very well … so (the selection methods are) not an exact science.”

In the end, the NCAA committee has 37 at-large selections to fill. Teams have to come from somewhere. Entering last week, five Pac-12 teams — California, Washington, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon — were within a game of the conference lead, all fighting for their postseason lives.

Their approach: ignore the critics.

“What we’re trying to do is … do the best we can to become the best team and win the most games and block out the noise,” UA coach Sean Miller said. “If we get caught up in all that, it’s just not healthy, it’s no fun, and what you find is you’re constantly defending yourself and your conference.

“I believe we have a number of teams that have really improved since Christmas, which makes sense because we have a young league with a lot of new coaches.”