At first, Saturday’s Territorial Cup felt like déjà vu.

“Kind of,” junior forward Romello White said of this sentiment, “we were kind of rushing shots once they got up and not playing defense.”

Three weeks ago, the Sun Devils fell to their rivals by 28 points in Tucson. On Saturday, it only took 14:25 for the Wildcats to build a 22-point lead on the Sun Devils, rendering the home crowd silent, except for select pockets of Wildcats fans.

However, the final 25-plus minutes of action perfectly demonstrated the difference between coach Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils and teams of years past, as they went on a 51-28 run in that span to come away with a 66-65 victory over UA (13-6, 3-3 Pac-12), a game that became an instant classic.

In fact, the rally is believed to be ASU’s largest single-game comeback victory in program history.

“This is what we’re supposed to do, this is Arizona State now,” junior guard Remy Martin said. “This is not back in the day where Arizona would just come in and win, it’s not like that anymore. Last game they got us, but that shows the character and the team that we have; we can come back from those types of losses and do this, and we’re expected to do this.”

Martin would have a huge role to play in the comeback, as it’s hardly news anymore for him to rise to the occasion in huge games. He’d go on to lead both sides with 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting from the field, while adding four assists, three rebounds and two steals.

“He’s a heck of a player,” Hurley said of his star point guard. “He’s one of the best players in the conference, one of the best players in the country, for me. He didn’t have a great shooting half—he missed a couple of free throws in the first half—but you count on that guy in the second half to make big plays and help you win games.”

Before Martin could even be in a position to spark the second-half rally, it took a strong finish to the first half by ASU (12-7, 3-3) to get within striking distance by halftime. The Sun Devils were able to cut the previously 22-point deficit to a 39-22 score by the final tv timeout of the first half, which came at 3:52.

At that point, Hurley made sure to stress the importance of finishing those final minutes as strong as possible.

“It was very important to us,” junior guard Alonzo Verge Jr. said. “Coach (Hurley) stressed it to us—the last three minutes, we needed to win the last three minutes, and that’s what we did.”

Verge Jr. actually sparked this finish to the half, as he single-handedly outscored UA 6-4 in those final minutes, which included a steal and fast-break dunk.

“Even as good as Verge’s points were, his on-the-ball defense was a problem (for UA) and he did a great job on both ends of the floor,” Hurley commented.

Then it would be Martin to tap in a bucket in the half’s final seconds, thanks to a seamless end-to-end transition effort by his teammates, allowing ASU to trail only 43-30 at the half.

On the surface, that seems bad, but there’s no doubt it could’ve been much worse. Martin would take that momentum into the second half, ultimately making the Wildcats regret not finishing the job while they had the Sun Devils down.

“Everybody was positive (at halftime),” Martin said. “We felt like we could come back and win. At the end of the day, we have tons of scorers—at the defensive end, we needed to pick it up—but we knew we were in the game when we cut it to 13, and we went out there and executed, got some stops, and as soon as we got some stops we started to run.”

"Obviously Nico (Mannion) is an important part of our team and him getting two fouls in the first half, that wasn't a good thing for us," said Arizona head coach Sean Miller, "but I think the other part of it is you got to give a lot of credit to Remy Martin. He is a heck of a player he's a winner he does it on offense he does it on defense, he does it game in game out he has great confidence in himself but he was the difference between the two teams today. He had 24 points on 17 shots. He's one of the best guards in our conference and he's one of the best guards in college basketball."

The defensive effort picked up, to say the least, as ASU held the Wildcats scoreless for the first 4:36 of the second half, and as Martin said, the offense followed. The Sun Devils would start the second half on a 10-0 run, which when accounting for the end of the first half was 16-0 overall.

On the other side, it was a scoreless drought that lasted 6:16 for the Wildcats from the end of the first half into the second, which accounts for over 15 percent of the entire game.

“I just think that we had to be the aggressor,” Hurley said. “They shot 50 percent in the first half (from the field), and they shot 50 (percent) from three. We had to be better on defense, and we couldn’t afford to give up that many points, and we talked about that (at halftime).

“I thought we missed a few layups in the first half—open layups, a couple of different guys, and then we missed free throws. So, we were kind of doing some of the same things we were doing in Tucson in the first half, and then we just really engaged on defense, I thought our energy was great.”

It was a scoring run that would’ve made the founders of “Guard U” proud, as all 16 of those points were scored by Martin (9), Verge Jr. (4) and senior guard Rob Edwards (3). They would also finish as the only Sun Devils in double figures, as Edwards put up 15 on 6-for-16 shooting (tied for team-high seven rebounds, plus two steals and an assist) and Verge Jr. would score 13, his first double-digit effort of conference play, on 6-for-15 shooting (four rebounds, two assists, two steals).

When all was said and done, this trio accounted for over 78 percent of ASU’s scoring on the night.

“Rob hit some big shots, played some really good defense,” Hurley said. “He was on Josh Green a lot…Rob was up for that challenge, we were able to negate one of their three primary guys, so that was helpful, his defense and big shots. Alonzo, I got a lot of trust in him, he’s a playmaker.”

By the end of that scoring run, ASU was only down 43-40 in the early minutes of the second half.

While the Wildcats went back ahead by seven thanks to a pair of buckets, the Sun Devils responded with a 6-0 run thanks to scores by Edwards, freshman Jalen Graham (four points, seven rebounds, two assists in 16 total minutes) and Martin, at that point trailing 47-46 with 13 minutes remaining.

From that point on, the two rivals remained neck-and-neck for the rest of the game, as Arizona would not lead by more than four points in those final several minutes of action.

Arguably the biggest shot that won’t be talked about was a three by Verge Jr. with 5:06 to play, which following a miss by UA pulled ASU within one point, which was huge after Edwards missed a three in the previous offensive possession and had the Wildcats responded with a basket or Verge Jr. missed that shot given UA a golden opportunity to take command late with a multi-basket lead.

“We just got a lot of fight,” Hurley said. “We got a lot of winners in the locker room, for years have gone to the tournament, have had good records, expect to win. A lot of teams got their shovels out, and the dirt and they were shoveling the dirt on us. But we got too many winners that weren’t going to back out of the game.

“They really attacked the last 25 minutes of that game and dominated the last 25 minutes.”

This would shine brightest in the final five minutes, as Martin would follow Verge’s triple with a layup only half-a-minute later, giving ASU its first lead, 60-59, since the game’s early minutes.

It would be one of five lead changes in the final five minutes, but none was bigger than Verge’s layup with 10 seconds to go, which would hold up as the game-winning shot in ASU’s dramatic and memorable victory.

“This can’t be the top of the mountain for us this year,” Hurley said. “We have to now try and make a surge off of this, and getting to .500 in the league with the schedule we’ve had is pretty good, and we’ve knocked out a lot of really hard games on our schedule. So, we’ve got to keep getting better and hopefully, we’ll do that next week.”

ASU returns to action Wednesday at 9 p.m. when it visits the Washington State Cougars (12-9, 3-5). The game will air nationally on ESPNU.