Arizona Wildcats on a dominant run against rival ASU Sun Devils

Men's basketball: 4-1

Admittedly, Arizona's men's basketball team has had ASU's number for a while now. ASU has only won five of the last 21 games dating back to the 2014-15 season, and Arizona would be a clean 5-0 in the last two years if it weren't for a miracle shot sent straight down from the basketball gods in the second meeting of the 2022-23 season.

Desmond Cambridge Jr. heaved up a complete prayer with a foot on the sponsor logo beyond half-court with 1.9 seconds left. ASU was down 68-66 after Arizona made a free throw, and just as the clocks struck zero and the buzzer rang out in McKale Center, Cambridge's unbelievable shot rang true.

That aside, though, it's been nothing but the Arizona show. No win was more flashy than the 105-60 thumping laid down in first meeting of the 2023-24 season. The 45-point victory was the largest margin by either side in the stories rivalry's history, Caleb Love threw up an iconic "forks down", and Jaden Bradley had a day with 21 points off the bench.

The Wildcats also smacked the Sun Devils around to the tune of a 19-point win on neutral turf in Las Vegas in the 2022-23 Pac-12 Tournament to end ASU's season on a very sour note. Four Arizona players reached double figures and Oumar Ballo logged a 14-point, 10-rebound double-double. Twice, Arizona laid ASU to rest up in Tempe in front of the Sun Devil faithful.

Even with Arizona's roster turnover, the existing talent on the squad and promising incoming players will make an Arizona squad vastly superior to their counterparts up north. Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd will continue to do what he does: beat ASU.

Women's basketball: 4-0

The women's basketball team is the only group aside from Arizona football that has come out of the last two seasons completely unscathed against ASU. In fact, the closest the Sun Devils ever got to the Wildcats was the 11-point loss they suffered in the second meeting last season.

Much like the men's squad, the Wildcats took ASU to the cleaners in the first meeting last season. Arizona walked out of Tempe having beaten the brakes off of the Sun Devils to the tune of a 39-point walloping. Five Wildcats reached double-digit scoring, and the Sun Devils had to tally a 91-52 defeat in the record books.

Arizona won by 18 points in the first matchup of the 2022-23 season and 13 points the next, scoring 80-plus points in both contests. Esmery Martinez logged double figures in both and reached 21 points in the first game of the season, while the second game saw five Arizona players hit double-digit points. Arizona's cohesiveness with Adia Barnes is promising for this streak to continue.

Softball: 6-1

The softball team has amassed the most wins over ASU in the two-season stretch than any of the other big five sports, going 6-1 and mercy-ruling the Sun Devils three times. The only loss came in Tempe in 2023, when the Wildcats couldn't generate any offense in the seventh inning to score a tying run and ASU pocketed a 4-3 win.

However, the Wildcats have score 10-plus runs on ASU three times. The first came in the form of a monstrous 11-0 shutout where Carlie Scupin and Allie Skaggs each launched multi-run home runs. The second came when Arizona smoked ASU 13-4 in five innings to boot them from the Pac-12 Tournament. The final one was a 13-3 blasting over five innings in the second game in April of this season.

Arizona also logged a gut-wrenching 9-0 smackdown in Tempe in the first meeting of the 2023 season, and the two other games from the 2024 season ended as 3-2 and 9-8 wins for the Wildcats. Third-year head coach Caitlin Lowe is finally getting her feet under her at Arizona after succeeding the legendary Mike Candrea.

Baseball: 4-5

Baseball is the only sport over the last two years where Arizona and ASU have remained mostly neck-and-neck. It's been feast or famine for the Wildcats, either winning handily or losing a close decision.

The highlight of this time frame was the unbelievable 20-0 dismantling Arizona did of ASU — the largest margin in the series, again — in the fourth game out of five the two teams would play in the 2023 season. The Wildcats scored 6 runs in the first inning, 3 in the next, and gave ASU two innings of rest before returning with a vengeance and scoring 4 runs in the fifth inning and three in the sixth.

Later that same season in the Pac-12 Tournament, the Wildcats sent the Sun Devils packing from Scottsdale back to Tempe with a 12-3 victory. Even as recently as earlier this season, Arizona notched an impressive 14-3 shellacking of ASU in front of the Tucson crowd.

Arizona's five games have been lost by a combined 13 runs, which still doesn't overcome the overall margin caused by the Wildcats' three lopsided victories. After Jay Johnson's unexpected departure, Arizona is finally back to being contenders with Arizona alum Chip Hale running the show. Expect the Arizona-ASU baseball rivalry to get even more heated in the coming years.

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