You could call it an anomaly.

In a way, that’s exactly what it was, for multiple reasons. Washington State — one of worst teams, on paper, in any Power 5 conference — entered Thursday night with eight wins on the 10-week old season. The Cougars had yet to win a road game this season and won just three in the previous two seasons.

Anomalies are part of college basketball. But results are results, regardless. With its 91-70 home loss to the Cougars, Arizona State suffered the single-worst result of the 2018-19 season.

And the Sun Devils know it.

“I’m not into making excuse,” head coach Bobby Hurley said. “There are none for this.”

Far more out of the ordinary was Washington State’s inability to miss in the first half, especially from beyond the arc.

The Cougars rank third in the Pac-12 a season clip of 35.6 percent from deep, but Thursday was still an unforeseeable shooting explosion. WSU made seven of its first 12 attempts from distance and used a 52 percent first-half clip to open up a 50-33 halftime lead.

Everyone got involved, too. It wasn’t just one or two guys getting red-hot — like, say, the Fullerton game, when two Titan guards combined for 66 points in an ASU overtime win.

WSU star guard Robert Franks shot 5-of-9 from beyond the arc and finished with 34 points and 13 boards. C.J. Elleby made three of his six long-range attempts. Viont’e Daniels added two trippels on four tries. All in all, five unique Cougars got in on the three-point shooting barrage.

“They had guys playing very well, which you have to do on the road,” Hurley said. “That’s really all I have to say about that.”

When all was said and done, the Cougars shot 40 percent from three on the game, but that’s after going 3-for-13 in the second half.

And on the flip side, it took 19 tries to get ASU its first three-pointer. By the night’s end, the Sun Devils had shot 5-of-33 from deep, 19-of-33 from the free-throw line and 33 percent from the field.

“They played extremely hard,” Hurley said. “Teams have been shooting around like 47 percent and they were very active and our numbers were very low across the board in every offensive category.”

ASU got outrebounded by seven against a team that had led in that category just once in its nine previous Pac-12 contests. After assisting on 18 of their 26 made shots in a memorable win over Arizona just a week ago, the Sun Devils had just against WSU. The Cougars had 22.

Individuals went ice cold. Luguentz Dort led the way with 22 points, but shot 2-of-7 from deep and turned the ball over five times compared to just one assist. Remy Martin and Rob Edwards combined to shoot 5-of-28 from the field and 1-of-16 from beyond the arc while turning the ball over a combined five times.

Kimani Lawrence was barely any better, making five of his 13 shot attempts. Even Zylan Cheatham wasn’t himself after an 11-point, 22-rebound performance against UA. He snatched another 16 boards, but the redshirt senior turned the ball over three times and went silent in the second half, with just two points.

The Sun Devils turned the ball over 17 times — the most they’ve done so in conference play — to the tune of 20 Washington State points.

“We’ve always kind of been hanging our hat on rebounding even if we’re not making shots,” Hurley said. “There wasn’t really anything overly positive that you could say.”

In short, everything that could go wrong went wrong.

Murphy’s Law struck ASU at the worst possible time.

“It’s a pretty damaging loss for us,” Hurley said. “I give Washington State credit for how hard they played and competed tonight.”

This was the game the Sun Devils couldn’t lose, let alone lose by 21. The Cougars entered Thursday night ranking No. 230 in the NET, meaning they’re a Quadrant 4 team, and that’s unlike to ever change, as it applies to any home game against a team outside the top 160.

Depending on where Princeton falls, ASU could be one of a small handful of Top 75 teams with more than one Q4 loss. In short, the road ahead just got way more bleak, with the margin for error essentially eliminated in full. If anything, it’s paper thin. Razor thin.

And now, with the weight of such a season-altering loss hanging on their shoulders, that road starts Saturday. That’s right, the Sun Devils have less than 48 hours to turn around and play a Quadrant 1 game against the Washington Huskies, who are undefeated in Pac-12 play and just took down Arizona by seven at the McKale Center.

That’s the same Arizona team that ASU just beat, less than a week ago, in one of the more rousing wins of the Bobby Hurley era. All of the momentum that win provided came crashing down Thursday night.

You’ve seen this before, though.

When the Sun Devils beat Kansas in front of a home sell-out crowd, ASU could do no wrong. Riding high into the final non-conference game, the Sun Devils took a very bad home loss to Princeton, 66-63.

It took weeks to recover from that; weeks that saw ASU lose to Utah and Stanford, but then pick up some momentum, earning a home sweep over the Oregon schools, its first road win at UCLA since 2009, and the first Territorial Cup win since Bobby Hurley’s arrival.

And then, when hope was high once again — crash. All of it fell to the floor, even more emphatically than last time.

“You can’t beat the teams who we’ve been able to beat, and then a team who hasn’t won a road game in their season comes in and beats you at this stage of the season, you can’t have that go on.”

Make no mistake, though — the season’s not over. But there’s no time to sulk. There’s no grace period. Mike Hopkins and Washington are headed to Tempe looking to improve to 11-0 in league and keep rolling their way into March.

If the Sun Devils want to salvage what has been, at times, a special, memorable season, they’d better take a page out of Zylan Cheatham’s book.

Rebound.