Remy Martin braced. He puffed his chest out and admired what he helped create, gazing into the beauty of hysteria.

It came at him like an avalanche.

As the stands began to bleed maroon and gold, Martin backpedaled with the fans bursting down the Wells Fargo Arena steps. They came from all directions. Some blitzed down the stairs, others just yelled but nearly all pulled out their phones for the memories. Those were aplenty.

“My dad went to the top of the (arena,) I don’t even know how he got down there,” ASU forward Zylan Cheatham said. “Next thing I know, he was hugging and picking me up. My dad is not really an emotional person, but to see him shed tears and just express how proud he was of me, that stuff you can’t buy.”

For Martin, though, it was a chance to slow down.

“I’ve never got the feeling of rushing the court,” he said. “I didn’t know they were going rush the court so I was like, all these people are coming at me. Where are they coming from? Are we really doing this right now? Those are the moments we live through. We fought our hardest to accomplish what we did.”

He backed into the pile at center court, into the silhouette that many have already carved into their minds and filed under the night the Sun Devils knocked off No. 1 Kansas.

The 6-foot, 170-pound Martin will likely be in the lasting video of the game as well. With just over a minute left, he raced to the free-throw line and hucked up an off-balance, contested jumper to put the Sun Devils up two.

Shortly after, he was able to celebrate ASU’s 80-76 victory over the Jayhawks (10-1). The win was ASU’s second win over Kansas in as many years and secured the school’s first win over the No. 1 team in the country since it beat top-ranked Oregon State in 1981.

“That was one of the great sports moments of my life,” head coach Bobby Hurley said. “This was just a huge moment for our basketball program, I remember when I started my first couple of games here, to see what it is like now is just unreal”

***

All season long, the Sun Devils have broken their huddles the same way.

“Relentless on three. One, two, three, relentless.”

It works well, an adjective able to insert itself in nearly every situation the Devils’ thrust themselves into. Saturday was no different

“Relentless pursuit,” Cheatham said.

The Sun Devils were forced to play from behind after the Jayhawks bolted to an 11-4 lead. To a degree, that part was expected against the No. 1 team in the country. And, hey, it seems like the Devils’ M.O. to come back in big games with a momentum-shifting run.

Instead, ASU merely stayed pat for 30 minutes. The seven-point lead Kansas jumped out to was the same one it had with four minutes to play, a few points swinging back and forth in the process.

“We are not just going to give up in the first half, we got a whole other half. We did it against Georgia, we were down 18 I think,” Martin said of his mindset at halftime. “We looked over each other and we knew we had our backs. Battles through practice, it’s developed there.”

Halftime, though, cured more than a mindset.

It gave the Hurley and the Sun Devil coaches time to formulate a plan on their first-half kryptonite, Kansas’ forward Dedric Lawson. The 6-foot-9, 235-pound big man had 18 points at the break, dominating the Sun Devils off screens and on the block.

“We had to make someone else beat us,” Hurley said of Lawson. “Just to try to make his touches a little more difficult, give him more attention. We just wanted to make them keep shooting contested jump shots”

With Hurley throwing double-teams on Lawson just about every time he touched the ball, Kansas shot just 39 percent from the field and Lawson only managed to take five shots. All the while, ASU had to remain patient, patient that a burst would come.

Over 14 minutes into the second half, the 14,592 on hand were still waiting.

The teases, however, came in bunches.

Freshman guard Luguentz Dort, who finished the night with 13 points, missed about a half dozen shots within a foot. ASU, as a whole, missed 12 free throws (20-32). And Kansas seemed to knock down big three after big three to keep a comfortable lead.

“We kept saying, ‘Hey we are right there. We are down three, five, seven, whatever it was we are missing a lot of layups and free throws, we are right there, just gotta stay in the fight,” Hurley said.

But with about four minutes to play, the Sun Devils started to ignite a bit.

Romello White hit a layup. Dort got fouled and knocked down his shots. Then Martin hit a free-throw line jumper. All of the sudden, the Sun Devils faced just a one-point deficit.

With just over two minutes left, the ball ended up in the hands of Rob Edwards, the Cleveland State transfer whose battled a back injury this season. He caught it and came around a Cheatham screen, playing himself into a double team.

But his two defenders -- Lagerald Vick and Marcus Garrett -- ran into each other, giving Edwards, who led ASU in scoring with 15 points, enough space to rise up and bury the triple. Up 76-74, the Sun Devils finally had a lead.

“It was a relief,” ASU forward Kimani Lawrence said. “Honestly, I don’t even remember him hitting it. Everything just happened so fast, you just play in the moment.”

After a pair of Lawson free throws, the Sun Devils had the ball again with a chance to take the lead with a minute to play. On the possession, Martin held the ball on the arc.

A quick backstory: Martin said he’s been working on the mid-range shot for his entire life, practicing it constantly in the gym looking for perfection. He also saw during the game that the lane was open just about every time ASU did a dribble hand-off.

Edwards came up for the screen but shot to the corner instead, turning the middle of the floor into no-man’s land. He took three dribbles to his right, stopping on a dime just beyond the free-throw line.

“Let’s run the clock down with a high-ball screen,” Cheatham said of the play call. “Make a play. I think we were actually trying to run something else but it broke down, they had denied one of the passes we were trying to make. We just had to improvise.”

His poofy hair sprung up before his feet even had a chance to square up. It didn’t matter. With Devon Dotson right in his face, Martin kicked his legs back and hitched his shot as his body turned towards the hoop. His shot, which hardly had any arc, hummed in the basket.

Wells Fargo Arena went into polite chaos.

Cheatham and Martin didn’t allow the Devils to do the same. After a Kansas’ turnover and a traveling call on Dort, the Jayhawks called a timeout with under 30 seconds left.

Coming out of it emerged the Devils’ final five -- Lawrence, Dort, Edwards, Cheatham, and Martin. The latter two seemed to be the only ones talking.

“It’s just about no fouling, no easy shots,” Lawrence said of the conversation. “Just (Remy) carrying over his intensity that he brings on defense and instilling it into us.”

It worked.

Martin pressured Vick as he was driving into the arc, forcing him to throw an over-the-head pass to Dotson. With Edwards pressuring, the ball slipped from Dotson’s hands. ASU ball.

The play sealed perhaps the biggest win in ASU basketball history.

And after a few formalities, ‘The Bank’ was able to celebrate. And not just the game, but where the Sun Devil basketball program is under Hurley.

Saturday was a show. Vice President of University Athletics Ray Anderson sat courtside with Michael Phelps and Jason Kidd. Hurley’s Duke teammate Grant Hill and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey were in attendance as well.

Cheatham laughed when asked to think back to his time as a fan of ASU basketball. To say the least, a win over No. 1 Kansas didn’t seem to be in the cards.

“Let’s be honest, definitely not,” Cheatham said. “For us to be winning at a high level and winning two years straight, it’s a credit to Bobby Hurley and the guys he brings in.”

The lights were the brightest they’ve ever been on Wells Fargo Arena Saturday. The Sun Devils’ win, though, may allow them to become even brighter quicker.

“I think it was pivotal for us,” ASU assistant coach Anthony Coleman said. “We were on a national stage, we competed with quote-on-quote the best of the best and coach Hurley is a heck of a coach and he’s shown, ‘You know what? You can have offensive freedom.

“We don’t run away from anyone. If you want to be on a major stage with big-boy competition, this is the place to come.”