Tracy Smith didn’t coach ASU’s last game. Or even the second-to-last game for the most-talented squad he’s ever had.

“It’s funny, I thought about that the other day,” Smith admitted.

During the seventh inning of a Friday game versus Fresno State, Smith and assistant David Greer were tossed for arguing a bang-bang play at first. And whatever Smith told the umpire got him suspended for the rest of the series.

He was all set to assume his head coaching role the following Tuesday. It was a mid-week, Territorial Cup matchup against Arizona that was scheduled to go on with no restrictions. Ominous dark clouds and forecasted rain postponed it to St. Patty’s Day. No big deal.

Two days later, the entire season had been canceled. By that point, nearly every sporting event in America had been halted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Truth be told, it just all happens so quickly,” Smith said. “We go from hearing there's going to be a limited crowd at a Sanford away game to, ‘Oh, gosh, they might cut our crowd to a third,’ to literally the season being canceled all within about 30 hours’ time.”

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Like the rest of the country, Smith found out on Thursday afternoon.

That morning, as the seriousness of the situation began to grow more clear with the news the NCAA Tournament had been outright canceled, Smith called a team meeting and tried to present any real-time information he could provide his team. There wasn’t much.

He approached a team that seemed in more dismay than anything. Not that they were in denial, but they didn’t think it was real. It all just happened so quickly. Smith told them to wait-and-see, that he wasn’t sure what would happen to the Utah series the next day.

A few hours later, the news broke. There would be no College World Series. There would be no season.

“That next meeting had a little different tone to it,” Smith said. “My strategy was to try and get them in a mindset of, ‘OK, this is bigger than baseball.”

Needless to say, it was bigger than baseball. That doesn’t mean kids understand that, or the mind immediately thinks to that. How could it? They’re envisioning their season lost, their chance at winning a National Championship out the door. They’re trying to reconcile with the fact that, for a handful, they just played their last college game and didn’t have a clue.

Simply put, it sucked.

Smith and his whole team were disappointed. But the Sun Devils head coach wanted to reign in the emotion of a lost baseball season, to put it in perspective compared to the far greater impacts and travesties the pandemic was inflicting.

“There are literally people standing in a hallway in various places around the world right now, making decisions on whether that person gets to live or that person gets the chance to be saved,” Smith said he told his team. “So as badly as we feel, let’s really think about this and take a step back and put it in context of what’s really important.

“I think guys were very mature about it because really no one, and I’m not kidding you, there wasn’t one guy that said, ‘We got screwed.’”

And, man, that would have been an easy route to take.

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This was supposed to be the year for ASU baseball. The season they really jumped back into national relevance. The year Smith could put the Sun Devils’ back-to-back 23-win years behind him, that he could really halt the fan outcry and the season he could add something to those big placards in the outfield.

He sure had the team to do it.

Before the season came to a screeching halt, the Sun Devils were 13-4. They had won 11 of their last 12 games. They had given up more than five runs just once all year and scored at least eight runs in all but one of their final dozen games.

“Truth be told, there have been some really negative things, comments about the baseball program in the last couple of years and you're kind of like, ‘Well, this is what we've been building for. This is what we've been talking about,’” Smith said. “And not to be able to show that off, yeah, it's a little frustrating.”

On top of all that, they had the best player in the country. First baseman Spencer Torkelson finished the 17-game season with a slash line of .340/.598/.740, six home runs and an absurd 31 walks (He was on pace to have a higher walk rate than any college baseball player ever).

In that Utah series or maybe the weekend after at Oregon State, it was all but a lock that Torkelson was going to break Bob Horner’s school-record of 56 home runs. ASU was all ready. They had celebrations planned and videos in the queue. Former Sun Devils greats like Reggie Jackson and Barry Bonds had recorded messages to congratulate Torkelson on the record.

Instead, he’ll finish two short. The videos will be archived forever.

“And I don't think anybody would dispute or would argue with the fact that he was going to crush the all-time home run record,” Smith said.

In a few months, Torkelson will likely be the first pick in the MLB Draft, which will be shortened to just five rounds in wake of an interrupted baseball season. For ASU, it’s good and bad news.

On one hand, at least four players -- Torkelson, infielders Gage Workman, and Alika Williams as well as pitcher R.J. Dabovich -- are all but a lock to head to the pros. But with the limited draft slots, guys like outfielder Trevor Hauver and pitcher Justin Fall may be inclined to stay another year.

“I would say there's a chance that we're going to get some guys back that in a normal year we absolutely would not have gotten back,” Smith said.

The Sun Devils also may be able to add seniors Myles Denson and Nick Cheema for another season after the NCAA announced Monday that players in spring sports would be granted another year of eligibility. But, for the time being, Smith was unsure exactly all the details of how that will play out with scholarships and roster spots.

Right now, he’s like most everyone else -- scrolling through Twitter for updates and trying to gather as much information about how the NCAA plans to go about something with no precedent.

But, to Smith, when everyone looks back in 20 years on how the pandemic impacted college athletics, there may be some positives.

“I think there were a lot of things that were in play from a professional side that were going to impact the college game before this happened, but I think this might be the catalyst to really accelerate those things. In other words, a reduced draft, decrease in minor league teams which, to me, would only help the game of college baseball.

“As we have the luxury of reviewing history, I think we’re going to look back and say, ‘That was the time when it changed and probably changed for the better.”