No midweek game for ASU this week which I like. Hopefully Bloomquist is able to give the boys a mental rest day.

On paper Houston doesn’t look very good. They don’t hit HRs, steal bases, or hit for average. Their defense makes a lot of errors. Their starting rotation isn’t dominant.

Seems like an opponent ASU should handle.

TBH im looking ahead to the Ok St series next week in Stillwater.

Here's the latest

A subscriber asked me to inquire about this topic, and here's what I found out.

ASU had five games register more than 900,000 viewers in the 2024 season, with the Jan. 1 Peach Bowl garnering more than 17.3 million viewers.

The Big 12 Championship win over Iowa State notched 6.9 million viewers on ABC, while the regular season finale at Arizona (Nov. 30) on FOX registered more than 2.8 million.

The final home game of the season vs. BYU (Nov. 23) had 1.3 million, while weekday night games against Utah (1.28 million on Friday, Oct. 11 on ESPN) and Texas State (993,000 on Thursday Sept. 12 on ESPN) complete the top viewed Sun Devil games of 2024.

Might as well get the thread going!

The Big 12's Media Days will take place at the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters in Frisco, Texas. ASU will be in the first group of teams on Tuesday, July 8 (the second group is the next day on Wednesday, July 9)


Designated Team Days:

Tuesday, July 8
Arizona State
Baylor
BYU
UCF
Cincinnati
Iowa State
Kansas State
Texas Tech

Wednesday, July 9
Arizona
Colorado
Houston
Kansas
Oklahoma State
TCU
Utah
West Virginia

Please let's focus the discussion on the concept itself and not derail this into "Michael Crow" sucks, This has little to do with him.

This was an interesting discussion on this topic

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The defensive lineman is the first known ASU player to enter the portal. Simply buried on the depth chart

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I made you all a breakdown of the scholarship players to refer back to whenever you have questions. I'll pin it. Hopefully it's helpful.

Click here for the chart



If you believe any of the information is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of place please let me know.

Also- Alex Losoya may not be a junior. Still waiting for official word on whether or not the two times he supposedly appeared in games are going to cost him a redshirt year. His family has told me they believe he's a redshirt sophomore.

ASUs final game at Muni in 2025 is against in state rival GCU.

Grand Canyon is in a heated conference race. The WAC gives their #1 and #2 seeds a double bye in their conference tournament. 5 teams are within striking distance of earning the bye with 3 games left.

Because the WAC will be a 1 bid conference, it makes sense for GCU to not use their arms against ASU and instead set them up for a Thursday- Saturday series this weekend.

ASUs situation is a little different (in my opinion). Earning a bye in the B12 tournament would increase ASUs chances of winning the auto bid, but in a conference where 9 different teams could legitimately win the conference tournament, ASU has to be mindful of building a resume for an at large bid.

In short, this game means a lot to ASU and almost nothing to GCUs resume.

It will be the last home game for multiple Devils including lifers Tobias, Vu, Jackson, and Compton.

Go Devils

here is the story on NCAA hockey moving away from Pairwise, have Not had time to read it but will later today........read somewhere if this format had been in place this past season ASU would have played in the 16 team championship

I enjoy following ASU Mens/Womens golf teams, so will try to post updates a couple of times per month moving forward

It is hard finding updated info on the team rankings, but the one poll I am able to find that has current rankings has Men listed @ #7 currently.......most of the events were in the fall, which is more or less considered like FB or Basketball "non conference" games...the spring is pretty much considered regular season, so moving forward with the spring events there will be much more updated rankings that are more realistic
* https://scoreboard.clippd.com/ranki...Type=Team&gender=Men&division=NCAA+Division+I

The men have a Freshman - Wenyi Ding - who joined the team in DEC I believe, and just won an event in Hawaii with a NCAA Mens record 189 score over 3 rounds.......he broke the ncaa record of 192 score over 3 rounds in his 2nd event with ASU, and DEvils finished #2 to N Carolina who won the 2023 NCAA's and are pretty much the team to beat for 2024.....here is brief story
https://thesundevils.com/story.aspx...-needed-for-this-headline&file_date=2/10/2024

Next big Mens event is Feb 25-27 @ Vegas

Will get to the Womens 2024 spring updates tomorrow........but since we are ranked in top 10 after finishing #2 in 2023 should be fun to follow this spring

Going to need to tag in @Snake River Devil for some help, but here's what seems to be the case.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the possible Big-12 title game seeding scenarios. Obviously the result of tomorrow's GCU game doesn't impact any of this.

For reference, here are the current standings.

If ASU sweeps Oklahoma State:

A very unique thing to keep in mind here is that currently WVU is #1 with a 19-6 conference record to ASU's 18-9 conference record. It does not appear that WVU will be making up two "postponed" games from its Oklahoma State series right before St. Patrick's Day.

If WVU is swept and ASU sweeps, WVU would be 19-9 in conference play and ASU would be 21-9. If WVU is not making up the canceled games, then that scenario would give WVU a .679 conference winning percentage and ASU's would be .700. I'd imagine that scenario would give ASU the top seed, since they'd (1) have more conference wins and (2) have a higher conference win percentage?

Now then, if ASU sweeps and WVU sweeps, WVU will have more conference wins and a greater win percentage, so it seems obvious that outcome would be #1 WVU and #2 ASU

If ASU sweeps and WVU wins 2/3, I'm not sure if that constitutes a true tiebreaker because both teams will have 21 conference wins, or if WVU gets the automatic nod for having a better win percentage.

The scenario that really has me puzzled is if ASU sweeps and WVU goes 1-2. ASU would have more conference wins (21 to 20), but WVU would have a greater win percentage (.704 for WVU to .700 for ASU), so I'm not sure how that works out.

WVU hosts Kansas, which is far from a gimme for the Mountaineers.

If ASU wins OSU series but doesn't sweep:

If ASU takes 2/3 against OSU, they'd be at 20-10 in the Big-12. Only two other teams (TCU and Kansas) can possibly end up 20-10 as well, since the most losses WVU can have is nine and all teams below ASU, TCU and KU already have at least 11 conference losses. KU and/or TCU would need to sweep this weekend in order to create that tiebreaker.

-If neither Kansas nor TCU sweeps this weekend, ASU has sole ownership of second.

-If Kansas OR TCU (but not both) sweeps, ASU has the tiebreaker over either due to having won the series against each, which would result in ASU getting second place.

-If Kansas AND TCU both sweep, the multi-team tiebreaker listed further below come into effect. I would imagine that the end result would be ASU #2, TCU #3, Kansas #4, since Kansas was swept by TCU and lost 2/3 against ASU, but ASU took 2/3 from both teams.

ASU vs TCU + KU: 4-2 (2-1 vs. both)

TCU vs KU + ASU: 4-2 (3-0 vs. KU, 1-2 vs. ASU)

KU vs TCU + ASU: 1-5 (0-3 vs. TCU, 1-2 vs. ASU)

As previously mentioned, Kansas plays at WVU, while TCU plays at last-place Utah.

Multiple-Team Ties (via Big-12 website)
In the event of a tie between more than two teams, the following procedures will be used. After one team has an advantage and is “seeded”, all remaining teams in the multiple-team tiebreaker will repeat the multiple-team tie-breaking procedure. If at any point the multiple-team tie is reduced to two teams, the two-team tie-breaking procedure will be applied.

1. Head-to-head (best cumulative win percentage in a ‘mini round-robin’ among the tied teams). If not every tied team has played each other, go to step 2. If all the tied teams are not common opponents, the tied team that defeated each of the other tied teams in a series earns the highest seed.
2. The best winning percentage in a ‘mini round-robin’ consisting of the first games of the Conference series between the tied teams. If not every tied team has played each other, go to step 3.
3. Win percentage against the highest-placed common opponent in the standings (based on record in all games played within the conference), proceeding through the standings. When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s win percentage against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tie-breaking procedure) rather than the performance against individual tied teams.
4. Draw

If ASU loses 2/3 or is swept:

In these two situations, ASU would finish either 19-11 or 18-12. There are five other teams (Kansas, TCU, Arizona, KSU, OSU) that can technically finish with between 10-12 conference losses. The scenarios seem too vast at this point to really outline without it being a wildly confusing novel.

To sum it up, if I have the information right:

-If ASU sweeps OSU: Worst case is #2 seed, possibly (?) #1 seed
-If ASU wins 2/3 vs OSU: #2 seed no matter what; can't get #1, can't drop to #3 or worse
-If ASU wins 1/3 or is swept vs OSU: CHAOS

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As we do each year at this juncture of the calendar, we take an extensive look at ASU's 2025 opponents and the respective takeaways from their spring practices. First in this series of articles, we examine the team that ASU beat to capture the Big 12 championship: Iowa State.

This season, and by virtue of winning the Big 12 championship, ASU will be the hunted rather than carrying the underdog hunter label that it was given prior to the 2024 season. And there's probably no team that is gunning more for the Sun Devils than Iowa State, the team that Arizona State dominated to capture the conference crown. An intriguing matchup awaits this fall in Ames, and Cyclone Report Publisher Bill Seals shares his observations of the Cyclones’ performance in spring practice and ahead of their fall camp.

Mornin Mates..

Today's Topic = Mothers Day

My mom became a huge Sun Devil fan after she moved out to Tempe from NJ to be with us in the desert...

All three of her kids have ASU degrees and she joined us in celebrating Sun Devil athletics...

She never missed watching her Devils playing football, basketball, baseball, and wrestling, etc, on a regular basis...

She never hovered over any of her kids but made our games in junior and senior HS when we played those sports there...

She also never figured that her kids were little darlings who could do no wrong as she knew better than that...

When I was younger and was upset about something like having to do some chores, I sometimes would run away from home but mom always fixed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with some chips and a soda, so when I got to the corner and ate my run-away meal, I returned home in short order and then did my chores...

My parents also told me when I got to HS that if I broke the law or disrespected teachers or screwed up in other ways, that those people would be the least of my worries and I knew exactly what that meant...

I wasn't going to get a P&J sandwich with chips and a soda and was most certainly going to be held accountable for any misdeeds...

Now we live in a selfie world where everything is celebrated, as if, like getting out of bed, is some sort of big deal, when in reality it's nothing at all for the most part...

Where it all ends no one knows but at least when it comes to NIL the state has put together a law that makes some sense...

It doesn't put a limit on how many Rolex watches a college player can waltz around campus in showing off their "status" but does set some boundaries around the whole process and what that entails...

Players won't be employees of the school but will get paid for some services provided to the school such as playing a sport at the school...

Whether this helps to level the playing field between those that have vs the have-nots is, again, anyone's guess at this point in time...

Time will tell and it will be interesting to see how this is all handled within the ASU athletic dept...

I have no idea how my mother would have viewed all of this wrangling related to college sports these days but I'm sure she would still be rooting for our Sun Devils in all sports...

She probably would have volunteered to make some P&J sandwiches for some of our athletes who might have needed them...

That's what moms do after all...

Happy Mothers Day to all those Sun Devil moms out there...

G'day Mates and Go Devils!!!

This is really cool

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Houston's solo homer in the first preceded an ASU response to the tune of 13 unanswered runs, including four straight innings with three or more runs and another offensive explosion by the Sun Devils in its 10th series win of the year

“This team's resilient. They’ll bounce back from adversity, which is a great trait to have." Sun Devil bounced back quickly from a disappointing Friday night loss as they overwhelmed Houston today, forcing a rubber match on Sunday

"We just gotta get a little bit better, and I’m confident that they will. Hopefully, we’ll come back and be ready to play." An ASU 4–1 home lead in the sixth inning evaporates quickly in a heartbreaking 6-5 loss to Houston

Never thought I would be saying it but will root for the Giants over the Cardinals.