So, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is Arizona State lost to No. 24 Arizona 113-100 on Tuesday night, the program's fifth straight Territorial Cup loss in the sport. The good news is that there's only one more game left in the regular season, so the torture is almost over.
The Sun Devils put up a decent fight, keeping the game within single digits for a significant amount of time, even closing the gap to three points with under five minutes to play. However, the Wildcats just dribbled circles around and outclassed ASU's limping roster.
Head coach Bobby Hurley has only had five of his normal rotational players (six scholarship guys) available for the last three games with freshman phenom Jayden Quaintance injured and leading scorer BJ Freeman dismissed from the team in February.
Alston Mason has attempted to pick up a big chunk of their slack, leading the team with an impressive 33 points on Tuesday, but there's just only so much one player can do. However, five Sun Devils reached double-digits against Arizona, which just makes the loss another reason to sigh and shrug about this disaster of a year.
ASU completes road schedule on sour note down in Tucson
The Sun Devils finished their 2024-25 road schedule 3-8, which is an exact replication of their road record in 2023-24. The last time ASU had a winning mark on away from Tempe was in 2022-23 when the team went 7-6.
ASU (13-17) will return to Tempe to close out its painful regular season against No. 9 Texas Tech, another likely loss to a team that could run the table at the upcoming Big 12 Conference Tournament.
Hurley will have to hope that his guys' demonstrated fight will be enough to distract athletic director Graham Rossini from the fact that the number in the loss column has gotten bigger over the last couple years. Devils in Detail was able to exclusively report on March 1 that Rossini is exploring how much Hurley's buyout would cost the school with one year remaining on his contract.
Hurley has recruited stellar rosters to Tempe but the results haven't amounted to much except a few NCAA Tournament appearances, something Rossini has said should be the "minimum requirement" for the program each season.
There will be a lot of reflecting to be done but Hurley and Co. will have one last opportunity on Saturday to provide some optimism moving forward.