Arizona State football lost to its in-state rivals, No. 15 ranked Arizona, 59-23, in a blowout win that saw ASU out of the game by halftime.

Now that the bad news is out of the way, the end of the game means the conclusion of head coach Kenny Dillingham’s first season at the helm of Sun Devil football. And while the season as a whole is a major disappointment performance-wise, Dillingham saw the one bright side when finishing with a 3-9 mark.

“We won the same amount of games we won last year,” Dillingham said. “Through all the adversity that we faced, we didn’t get worse through the craziest year I have been a part of, and I coached Pop Warner.”

Although the team did not finish with a worse record than last season, Dillingham did call the loss to Arizona’ rock bottom,’ and it is clear to see why. Arizona sophomore quarterback Noah Fifita enjoyed nearly limitless time in the pocket as he diced up the ASU defense with completions to his two favorite wideouts, sophomore Tetairoa McMillan and senior Jacob Cowing.

It seemed like the pair were open all over the field all the time. Arizona head coach Jeff Fisch identified that ASU struggled to cover intermediate crossing routes over the middle part of the field, and they attacked it hard. McMillan and Cowing combined for 20 catches for 423 yards and a touchdown, and Fifita finished with 527 yards through the air with four touchdowns, all on a sparkling 73% completion percentage.

Fifita established a Territorial Cup Game record with 527 passing yards, while McMillan did the same with 266 receiving yards.

While ASU was able to marginally recover in the second half in order to make the deficit smaller, the game was reminiscent of ASU’s 70-7 beatdown of Arizona in 2020. That was rock bottom for the Wildcats, and three years later, they delivered a decisive win of their own. They turned it all the way around to become a top-15 team in the nation.

Now, ASU is now looking to do the same.

“It’s not fun all this stuff, but sometimes it’s needed,” Dillingham said. “Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to bounce back up, and where we were as a program, in the direction we’re going, I have 1,000% confidence that the ball’s bouncing up, not down. But I do believe you, we finally hit rock bottom. I think everybody knows that, and then once you hit it, you start going up. I believe that’s what we’re doing.”

As ASU packs up and begins looking at the steps they need to take in order to fully bounce up from rock bottom, one thing is clear: Kenny Dillingham is the right man for the job.

All season long, even when the losses started to get uglier and uglier, Dillingham was on a mission to establish his new culture as fast as possible. That was the goal of his first season. No matter what the record on the field was, if ASU finished the season with a better culture than when it started in spring ball, the season could arguably be seen as a success.

He succeeded.

“I’ve been a part of five different cultures, and this is the first culture I genuinely bought into,” graduate linebacker Tre Brown said. “Whether it was the weight room, whether it was the playbook on defense, whether it was special teams, and just believing in what (Dillingham) echoes every day.

“I love this culture. I wouldn’t trade any place for where I am right now. I love the guys that are in that room. I love the coaches. I love these players. As you can see, these players are dedicated to each other. It’s more than football. The culture that the coaches built is only gonna get stronger and bigger, and I’m just saying for the future, man, that’s going to be something to see.”

That kind of buy-in and respect from a graduate transfer who knew he had no chance at playing in a bowl game because of the self-imposed postseason ban and then spent his final collegiate season going 3-9 is rare.

While making that much of an impact on a player who is leaving is important, making a lasting impact on the players who will be with you battling again next year is even more crucial to building a successful program. If the players who are returning as Sun Devils next season don’t continue to buy into the message that Dillingham is delivering, then all the progress made this season is for naught, but it doesn’t seem like ASU has that issue.

“The guys want to come back to be a part of the program next year,” Dillingham said. “You can just see it like you can see it. They’re not wavering in terms of the direction we’re going. They know the direction set. They believe in the direction, and they’re like, ‘Okay, this is what it takes. What we did this last year wasn’t good enough, so let’s get better.’ And they’re going to help us bring players into the program to help us be better.”

In just his first season, Dillingham was able to leave a lasting impact on the players and gain the full support of the locker room. Now the big question is, did Dillingham do enough to draw support from the fans?

After he concludes all of his end-of-season meetings, Dillingham is not going to focus on recruiting better players to his program. He’ll let his assistant coaches do that. Instead, Dillingham is going to put most of his focus on convincing fans to support ASU in what has become the most important area of recruiting: NIL.

“I can go recruit; that’s cool. I am going to go fundraise because that is the name of thegame nowadays,” Dillingham said with a chuckle. “So what are we going to do? I am going to go fundraise, fundraise, fundraise. … I’ll go out and recruit some players, but I’m recruiting people who want this place to win as well, and that has nothing to do with the players.”

The bad news of ASU’s first season is out of the way. Arizona has won back-to-back Territorial Cups. A record of 6-18 over the previous two seasons is the worst two-season stretch in program history. It is a lot of bad, but it is all in the name of building something good.

“I keep saying it, it’s miserable,” Dillingham said about the first season. “You think I like coming up here and talking about how we just lost the Territorial Cup. It’s miserable. But what are you going to do? Go back to work.

“It’s part of the process. It sucks, but it is what it is. We’re going to get (the Territorial Cup) back. And when we get it back, it’s going to be in a home that’s built right.”