Bordow: Stunning win shows ASU’s growth

TUCSON - Eight seconds left in the Arizona State-Arizona game and only four words can escape the mouth:

Are … you … kidding … me?

The Sun Devils won, 59-54?

After being down 22-6?

Pendergraph leads ASU to 59-54 win at Arizona

SLIDESHOW: See action from the game

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After watching helplessly as UA guard Jerryd Bayless scored 39 points?

After an ill James Harden made just one field goal?

Why, you’d need a junior-college degree from ASU to figure out the improbability of that.

“It’s been a long time,” forward Jeff Pendergraph said. “Our whole college career, we’ve been getting beat here.”

It’s been a lot longer than that, Jeff.

This was ASU’s first victory in McKale Center since 1995, and that win came with an asterisk: UA was missing Damon Stoudamire, Ben Davis and Joseph Blair.

That was also the last year ASU swept Arizona.

There will be talk now, just as there was then, that the Sun Devils’ victories represent a changing of the guard.

Don’t believe it. At least, not yet.

Two wins don’t change the face of a rivalry. Nor does beating Arizona suddenly pave ASU’s path to the NCAA tournament.

No, what transpired in 80 minutes this season is simpler than that, if not quite as sexy:

The Wildcats are slipping. The Sun Devils are growing.

If Herb Sendek isn’t the Pac-10 Coach of the Year at this point, who is?

“Credit ASU,” Wildcats interim coach Kevin O’Neill said. “They swept us. They deserve it.”

Myopic Arizona fans will point to the fact Bayless missed the game in Tempe while point guard Nic Wise sat out Sunday’s contest with a knee injury.

So what?

Harden, who was so sick with a virus he didn’t practice all week, had just five points. Arizona led by 16 eight minutes in the game.

The next 32 minutes, the Sun Devils outscored the Wildcats, 53-32.

That doesn’t happen, in Tempe or Tucson, in sickness or in health.

“I just wasn’t losing today,” Pendergraph said.

That was quite the possum act ASU was putting on in the first few minutes, then. When it was 22-6 at the media timeout with 11:46 remaining, it looked like so many other ASU-UA games down here.

Bayless was playing like a future NBA lottery pick, making his first seven shots, four of them 3-pointers, and smiling to the crowd after each basket.

“We were hit between the eyes,” Sendek said. “We were so vulnerable.”

Past ASU teams would have quit right then. Or become so rattled they couldn’t run a play properly.

But these Sun Devils have become a reflection of their head coach: They don’t lose their cool.

Sendek didn’t scream at them during timeouts or deliver some corny speech. He told them to be patient, to play one possession at a time, to not lose their composure.

Simple stuff, really, but on the road, against the in-state rival? Priceless.

“Coach just told us to keep after it and that we’d get back in the game,” Pendergraph said.

They did just that.

It was 32-31 at halftime, thanks mostly to Pendergraph playing out of his mind — taking advantage of Jordan Hill’s foul trouble, he had 20 of his career-high 29 points in the first half — and a Wildcats’ team that proved to be a one-man show.

Bayless made 12 of 18 shots. His teammates: 3 for 23.

Oh, and remember Chase Budinger, Arizona’s most heralded recruit since Sean Elliott? He was 1 of 12, scored four points and had three fewer rebounds than ASU freshman Ty Abbott, who is 4 inches shorter.

Forget the NBA draft. Budinger should pursue a professional volleyball career.

But enough about Arizona. This was ASU’s day.

How sweet was the win?

After last year’s 71-47 loss, Sendek was out of the locker room and on the bus so fast some reporters missed his postgame comments.

Sunday, he lingered in the hallway, accepting congratulations from athletic director Lisa Love, acknowledging the cheers and screams of Sun Devil fans and cracking jokes about his coaching acumen.

“I’d like to take all the credit for the great defensive effort we put on Bayless,” he said, laughing. “What’d we hold him under, 40?”

What this win portends for the future, or where ASU goes from here, who knows.

But for one afternoon, all the past beatings were forgotten.

“It’s not good losing to ASU twice in a row,” Bayless said.

If Bayless does turn pro after this season, as expected, he will be one of the very few Wildcats ever to say this:

He’ll have ended his Arizona career without beating ASU.