You literally can count the number of Arizona women’s basketball wins over Arizona State in the past 12 years on one hand.
ASU is 21-5 in the rivalry since 2001, with only one loss out of 15 games in the past seven years. The Sun Devils won three meetings last season, including at the Pac-12 Tournament.
A 12-point lead early in the second half evaporated into a seventh consecutive loss Sunday for the Arizona State women’s basketball team as they fell 71-63 to No. 21 Colorado.
Colorado used a 16-1 run on Play4Kay day supporting breast cancer awareness at Wells Fargo Arena to take 54-49 lead with seven minutes left. ASU could not reclaim a lead, leaving coach Charli Turner Thorne feeling “very full. If I eat any more humble pie, I’m going to burst.”
Tim Esmay didn’t start Deven Marrero in his first game, something for which the Arizona State coach pokes fun at himself now that Marrero is a first-round draft pick beginning his pro career with the Boston Red Sox organization.
But waiting your turn is a tradition at ASU that applies to a top-five-ranked recruiting class when the No. 20 Sun Devils open their season Friday night.
The International Olympic Committee’s decision to drop wrestling from the 2020 Olympics reverberated loudly in Arizona, home to one of the nation’s premier wrestling clubs.
Art Martori, founder of the Scottsdale-based Sunkist Kids Wrestling Club and former USA Wrestling president, blames leaders of the international wrestling federation, FILA, for failing to recognize that the sport was in danger and not doing the necessary lobbying to prevent its elimination.
Henry Cejudo, 2008 Olympic wrestling champion from Phoenix, said Tuesday he is distraught over the International Olympic Committee decision to drop wrestling from the 2020 Olympics and will work to overturn that decision.
“I’m angry, I’m sad, I feel like I just broke up with my dream girl,” said Cejudo, who retired from wrestling after failing to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. “Wrestling is as popular as the sport of basketball,” in U.S. high schools. “Maybe I do have a biased opinion, but it’s just a no-brainer,” to include wrestling.
Even without leading scorer Janae Fulcher, Arizona State women’s basketball played No. 6 California even over the final 29 minutes late Friday night.
Cal built a 21-8 lead when ASU missed 13 of its first 15 shots and won 66-53, but the Sun Devils broke even 45-45 in between thanks to posts Joy Burke and Haley Videckis setting or tying their scoring highs of 16 and 11 points. That helped to fill the gap left by senior forward Fulcher (11.6 ppg), out due to a minor medical issue.
The Arizona State women’s basketball team has little to lose this weekend, going on the road yet again to face two Top 10 teams in three days.
No one expects ASU (11-11, 3-7 Pac-12), with five losses in its past six games, to beat either No. 6 California (19-2, 9-1) Friday or No. 4 Stanford (20-2, 9-1) Sunday. That could be liberating for a program that annually expects to be near the top of the conference but, in a transition season with many young players, is tied for eighth.
The world will come to Russia, presumably with love, in a year for the Sochi Winter Olympics.
That’s unlike 1980, when war — specifically a Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan — prompted U.S. President Jimmy Carter to strong-arm the U.S. Olympic Committee into not sending a team to the Moscow Summer Olympics. Sixty-five countries sat out the only Olympics awarded to Russia until 2007 when the International Olympic Committee chose Sochi over PyeongChang, South Korea, by four votes.
Former Arizona State football coach Dennis Erickson interviewed Tuesday for a position on the Utah staff, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Erickson was ASU head coach from 2007-11, finishing 31-31 in five seasons before losing his job. He did not coach in college football in 2012 but is being considered for a spot on Kyle Whittingham’s Utah staff.
This is not a good season for the Arizona State women’s basketball team to be in transition.
With four nationally ranked teams in the Pac-12 and others — such as Sunday’s opponent, Washington — on the rise, ASU is at risk of not only its 13-year postseason streak coming to an end but of finishing with a losing record for the first time since 2000.
