Arizona State was finally starting to build some momentum.

Looking to stretch a 10-point lead — his team’s largest to that point — to 13 and start putting the pesky Stanford Cardinal away, freshman forward Taeshon Cherry pulled up for a three from the corner and fell to the ground on the close-out by Stanford guard Jaiden Delaire.

Cherry was visibly frustrated. As the Delaire turned to make his way back up the court, Cherry simply stuck his leg in the air, tripping the defender. He was assessed a flagrant two foul and was ejected.

“He’s got so much spirit and emotion and raw energy,” Hurley said. “You’ve got to try and harness and control it.”

That’s, essentially, the epitome of how things were going up until that point. Every time the Sun Devils started to get it rolling, for the first three-quarters of Wednesday night’s contest, something slowed them down — an ugly possession, a thoughtless foul, a turnover, a defensive lapse.

Both on the bench and in the stands, frustration continued to build, and build, and build, ultimately boiling over with Cherry’s ejection.

But despite what seemed like countless setbacks and exasperating moments, ASU won and ended up doing so pretty comfortably. And, while the 80-62 final score in the Sun Devils’ (18-8, 9-5 Pac-12) Wednesday night home defeat of Stanford (14-12, 7-7) may say otherwise, they won ugly.

For this team, that’s kind of new.

“I had a feeling that we were going to be able to do deliver,” Hurley said. “The guys played like gangsters out there. They played hard, they took control of the game, they battled, they fought.”

For the majority of the first half, the mood of Wells Fargo Arena did not reflect the scoreboard, and for good reason.

The Sun Devils only trailed for two-and-a-half minutes of the opening period — all coming before the under-8 media timeout — but their overall performance in the first 20 minutes could only be described as choppy.

And even at the tail end of the half, after a quick 7-2 run gave the Sun Devils some breathing room, Rob Edwards was called for a charge on a halfcourt buzzer-beating heave.

That was one of many, many calls from the opening half that infuriated Bobby Hurley, his bench, and his team’s fans, as it gave Stanford possession with just under a second left instead of what very well could have been three foul shots for ASU going into the break.

“I can’t really go into detail about that play,” Hurley said. “You saw I wasn’t thrilled with it. But that’s a part of the game, things happen, you’ve just got to play through it.”

But the Cardinal didn’t score. The dust settled. ASU kept its lead, and slowly but surely, in the second half built it.

In fact, as negative as the end of the first half appeared to be based on the overarching emotions of Wells Fargo Arena, it was much more the opposite.

According to Remy Martin — who finished with 16 points and whose three-pointer that closed the Sun Devils’ run and pushed them into the break up 42-34 — that late run, despite being seemingly marred by a controversial call, was a spark.

“That definitely was a big momentum swing,” Martin said. “Sometimes at halftime, it’s a close game, and the other team will jump out on us, so it’s also good to know that, hey, we got some leeway, we can still play, we still feel free. But it went the other way, we were the aggressors, we were the people that punched first and we kept it going throughout.”

Even in the earlier portions of the second half, things still felt stagnant as the ASU painstakingly tried to push Stanford away. It wasn’t until a triple by Zylan Cheatham (11 pts, 10 rebs) and a jumper by Rob Edwards — who, with Martin, led his team with 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting — pushed the lead to 14 with five minutes left that the mood seemed to settle.

“(Edwards) showed great patience on offense,” Hurley said. “He was very efficient… had a number of good passes as well, got five rebounds, played good defense. He’s rounding into form.”

What was lost in the shuffle of the early frustration, though, was that ASU continued to win with its defense. The Sun Devils forced 13 turnovers, held the Cardinal to a 2-of-21 clip from deep, and gave up their second-lowest number of points in Pac-12 play.

That kind of defensive effort — one that kept Stanford from developing any semblance of consistent offense — kept ASU in business on the scoreboard when other aspects of the game didn’t seem so positive.

“You can’t ask for a whole lot better (on defense),” Hurley said. “I think part of it was just our pressure, and then what we were doing with some ball screens, we were really speeding them up some and we didn’t allow them to just go side to side… We just were more aggressive.”

Sure, the Cardinal weren’t playing with top scorer KZ Okpala, who torched ASU for 21 points when the two last met in Palo Alto on Jan. 12.

But Stanford entered Wednesday having won five of its last six and averaging 85 points in those victories. Beating the Cardinal won’t look like anything impressive on the NCAA Tournament résumé, but beating any team that’s playing with that kind of consistency, in this conference? That shouldn’t be overlooked.

“They’ve been winning,” Hurley said. “They’re five of their last six, they’ve been playing very well, they’ve been expecting to win. It’s not easy when you lose a key component to what you’re doing… They fought hard, they battled, again, they were in a routine of winning. So, they came out and played hard and expected to win.”

So, ASU got its revenge from a 14-point loss to Stanford in which the Cardinal shot 53 percent from the field. This time around, the Sun Devils came out on top by double digits, shot lights out from the field, and took home the far more challenging front end of what, for all intents and purposes, probably should be a sweep weekend of the Bay Area schools.

But the Sun Devils don’t want to get too high. That’s been their downfall to many times this season. They just want to keep it rolling.

“I feel good about what we’ve been doing the last four games, even losing a close game to Colorado,” Hurley said. “We’re playing the right way.”