Arizona State men’s basketball coach Herb Sendek gave his team a choice of two paths Sunday.

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Take the high road following the NCAA tournament selection committee’s snub.

Or curse its fate.

Neither was a path the Sun Devils hoped to travel this week, but Sendek’s intent was clear.

“If our initial reaction is to point the finger let’s first take inventory of some of the opportunities that we had along the way that we could have taken better advantage of,” Sendek said. “If you want to start and end by playing the role of the victim, you let a great opportunity slide by to learn from the experience.”

Arizona State had plenty to gripe about Sunday. While the Sun Devils were relegated to the National Invitation Tournament, six Pac-10 teams received NCAA bids, including Oregon and Arizona.

ASU finished tied for fifth with Oregon in the conference, but had five wins over top-50 ranked teams opposed to Oregon’s four.

More jarring was the choice of the Wildcats, who received the West Region’s No. 10 seed and their 24th consecutive NCAA tournament bid.

ASU beat Arizona both times the teams played this season and the Sun Devils finished higher in the conference. UA was swept by UCLA, Stanford, Arizona State and Oregon — four of the conference’s top six teams — and its best nonconference wins came against UNLV (No. 24 in RPI) and Texas A&M (No. 41). ASU beat Xavier (No. 9).

“If they’re (UA) in it’s going to be kind of messed up if we don’t get in,” forward Jeff Pendergraph said.

A number of factors likely doomed the Devils. The selection committee pointed to their nonconference schedule (No. 296 in the nation) and their record against the Pac-10’s top four teams.

“The reality check is that their strength of schedule was extremely high. It was way up there,” selection committee chairman Tom O’Connor said.

“Even though the RPI is a data point collection, it does tell you something. If Arizona State would have been selected for the tournament, they would have been the highest RPI ever to go into the NCAA. Please put that on the side though because it’s only a data point collection.

“The other thing is they were 2-7 versus the top 4 teams in the Pac‑10 when it’s necessary to look at who they play.”

A win by Georgia in the SEC tournament, a loss by Saint Mary’s in the West Coast Conference tourney and the choice of three Atlantic 10 teams also hurt ASU by reducing the number of at-large bids available.

So did the unexpected weakness of nonconference opponents such as Princeton and Illinois.

But if the Sun Devils choose introspection — and that is Sendek’s hope — they can look at home losses to Washington, California and a 9-minute, 35-second field goal drought that cost them a Pac-10 quarterfinal against USC after building a 49-42 lead.

“Obviously it’s a very disappointing moment for us,” Sendek said. “But it’s merely a function of where you want to put weight in the equation — what variables are you going to give weight to?

“If head-to-head competition doesn’t weigh as heavily as the composition of your nonconference schedule then there’s a chance that Arizona goes in ahead of us and that’s obviously what happened.”

ASU, which has not made the NCAA field since 2003, will open the NIT as the No. 1 seed in the West Region against Alabama State at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Wells Fargo Arena.

Asked if it would be difficult to refocus his team in such a short period of time, Sendek said: “It’s not going to be easy.”

But Pendergraph shrugged it off.

“We’ve been dusting off and moving on all year. I don’t think it will be that difficult,” he said.