Feb. 22, 2009, was the last game Arizona Wildcats Basketball played against Arizona State in Tempe, without their trusted head coach Sean Miller.
That season college basketball in the state of Arizona was turned upside down.
A quarter-century of Wildcats dominance on the hardwood was slowly ending.
Arizona was going through it’s second straight season of having an interim head coach because of the poor health and eventual retirement of Hall of Famer Lute Olson.
Tucson was not on the minds of college basketball fans.
Tempe was.
The Devils had arguably their best player ever in James Harden and he had the fans in Tempe in a place they had not been very often, ranked.
More from Zona Zealots
- Arizona Football begins Conference play against Stanford
- Arizona Football starts slow but runs away from UTEP
- How Wildcats Fans Can Claim $200 INSTANT Bonus at BetMGM Betting $10 Right Now
- Costly Mistakes doom Arizona Football in loss to Mississippi State
- Arizona Basketball likely to schedule Florida Atlantic for 2023
Wells Fargo Arena looked much different than it had in previous Arizona visits, in which the Wildcats would fill nearly half the arena with their red-clad fans.
It was the first time in ages the game in Tempe felt like a true road game for Arizona.
The Devils were going for their fourth straight win against the Cats. Sun Devils fans could smell the blood of the potential downfall of their rivals from the South.
Sparky’s children wanted to be there when the Arizona dynasty collapsed. The student section was even completely full. It was one of the most memorable nights Sun Devil fans have had in the ‘rivalry.’
ASU prevailed by two and for one night in February, Phoenix felt like a college basketball town.
As some of the Arizona fans fled the scene after the game, a Sun Devil student waited outside with a huge smile on his face, holding a sign listing the top three players of the future 2010 Arizona recruiting class. All three lines were blank.
With no head coach, Arizona had no commits.
Things looked bad.
They got worse when the Devils beat Arizona for the fifth straight time when the ‘rivals’ met in the Pac-10 Tournament.
The Devils went into March looking to make a run. With it’s best team since the Bill Frieder era, the Sun Devils didn’t make it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament.
After losing to the Devils three times that season, Interim Head Coach Russ Pennell got Arizona somewhere the Devils couldn’t: the Sweet Sixteen.
The next season Sean Miller took over in Tucson and the ‘rivalry’ was the same as it ever was.
Arizona is 9-4 against the Sun Devils since.
The momentum Tempe had going with Harden was stopped when he entered the NBA draft.
The Devils have had a couple of nice wins over some great Arizona squads the past few years but the last time many Wildcats fans were passionate about the matchup was when Ty Abbott didn’t know Kevin Parrom was from New York and tried to get in his face in 2010.
That changed on Saturday when
Bobby Hurley got ejected and nearly went Hal McRae
on the Pac-12 officials telling him to shut up.
Arizona State couldn’t have found a better villain for Arizona fans to hate than Hurley. Tucson has despised this guy for 25 years.
Arizona fans got to see him up close in 1991 when the Dukies came to McKale for an epic non-conference matchup, in which the Cats won in double overtime over the eventual National Champions.
When he stepped on the court, the McKale faithful didn’t see Hurley as a hard-nosed lunch pail bucket kind of guy. They saw Hurley as a punk who was buddies with Christian Laettner.
When the Devils come to Tucson Feb. 17, 2015, McKale will be chomping at the bit for Hurley’s return.
Hurley might be the thing that can make Arizona Basketball Fans loathe Arizona State Basketball the way Sun Devils fans loath Arizona Basketball.
Maybe he can make this ‘rivalry’ a rivalry.
Next: How to Get Blocked On Twitter by ASU Coach Hurley
BearDown Arizona!