Polar Opposites: ASU, Arizona men’s basketball headed in opposite directions

TEMPE – After Arizona’s seventh straight win over Arizona State in men’s basketball Saturday, it is more apparent than ever that the Wildcats and Sun Devils are programs on opposite trajectories.

With their 87-74 victory at ASU’s Desert Financial Arena, the top-ranked Wildcats extended their season-opening win streak to 22. The 22-0 start, including 9-0 in Big 12 Conference play, is the best in the history of a program that has had a lot of hot starts.

The Sun Devils, meanwhile, fell to 11-11 and 2-7 in the Big 12, a league that they can’t seem to figure out. ASU is a dismal 6-23 in Big 12 games since joining in 2024, while UA is the exact opposite, an impressive 23-6. 

“(Setting the record) is special,” Wildcats coach Tommy Lloyd said in an interview with TNT after the game. “When I took this job, I knew I was inheriting an amazing legacy … I inherited a program that had really strong bones.” 

Desert Financial Arena was almost filled to the brim, something ASU hasn’t seen much this season. However, the large contingent of Wildcat supporters was just as loud, if not louder, than the Sun Devil fans in attendance.

“There were too many red shirts in the arena,” ASU coach Bobby Hurley said. “It was not a home game.”

Opened in 1974, DFA is an aging arena, decades past its prime. Compared to many other major college basketball arenas, it’s arguably an eyesore. Renovations to the building were announced in October, but plans aren’t likely to win any recruiting battles right now. 

Meanwhile, UA’s McKale Memorial Center is a year older but has undergone past renovations, and in October the Arizona Board of Regents approved $50 million for improvements to McKale and nearby Arizona Stadium, where the Wildcats play football.

McKale is considered one of the best arenas in college basketball and is praised as being one of the toughest places to play. Over the past three seasons, the Wildcats are 40-4 at McKale, landing it at No. 9 in college hoops analyst Andy Katz’s top men’s college basketball arenas, a testament to Arizona’s dominance. 

A big part of that is fan support. Over their 12 games, Wildcat fans have packed McKale, averaging 14,134 fans in an arena with a listed capacity of 14,545. 

“It’s different in McKale,” Arizona’s standout freshman Koa Peat said in a November interview on NBC. “Seeing that firsthand on my visit, it was a no-brainer and helped me pick my choice in coming to Arizona and being a Wildcat.”

By contrast, the Sun Devils are just 21-19 at home over the last three seasons, and DFA lacks the buzz it once had. During the 2025-26 season, attendance has continued to drop, with an average of 7,901 fans in an arena with a listed capacity of 14,198.

“We have not played well here in years,” Hurley said in a press conference after a home loss against West Virginia. “We had this place cookin’ before COVID, and now it’s a sterile environment.”

It’s an environment that has been hard to sell to recruits.

For the most part over the last decade, ASU’s recruiting classes have been lackluster, and a failure to retain talent in the NIL and transfer portal era has complicated the situation.

That’s not to say the program has been without its fair share of successes. Hurley’s 2024 recruiting class, featuring Jayden Quaintance and Joson Sanon, ranked as the No. 7 overall class in the country. 

Still, ASU finished 13-20 last season and almost the entire team departed the program. 

While the lack of deep recruiting classes and an inability to retain players are issues, perhaps the most glaring problem ASU has had is losing out to its in-state rival for local talent.

UA has regularly outpaced ASU in terms of in-state recruiting.

From Peat, the local prize of the 2025 class, to Kylan Boswell in 2022 and Dalen Terry in 2020, Arizona has won out. All were at least a top-50 recruits, per 247Sports player rankings, and all played their high school ball in the Phoenix area.

Yet, all three decided to make the move to Tucson to play for the Wildcats, continuing a trend that goes back at least as far as Mike Bibby.

That trend only appears to be continuing as top-30 recruit Cameron Holmes of Millennium High School in Goodyear has signed a letter of intent to play at Arizona next season. 

The constant strong recruiting and transfer classes, and Arizona’s ability to retain players has allowed for sustained success.

In their last 11 NCAA Tournament appearances, the Wildcats haven’t been below a No. 6-seed. While there haven’t been many deep tournament runs in the past decade, the Wildcats have been a mainstay in the upper echelon of the college basketball world – while the Sun Devils continue to slide toward irrelevance.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.