Zylan Cheatham and Taeshon Cherry met Kimani Lawrence at the east end of Wells Fargo Arena, mobbing the 6-foot-7 forward after his transition steal and emphatic slam gave ASU (13-5, 4-2 Pac-12) a two-point lead over Oregon late in the first half.

What ensued became the game’s theme, a rallying cry for a team determined to rediscover mojo that had them ranked just a few weeks ago.

Cherry reached Lawrence but failed to acknowledge him, his head veered off to the right. With a wide-eyed grin plastered across his face, Cherry moved closer and closer to Oregon’s Ehab Amin, jawing with the guard as the two met chest-to-chest.

It took about two seconds before a referee intervened, promptly assessing Cherry with a technical foul that hardly fazed him. With a gleeful exuberance, the Sun Devils ran to their sideline like champions.

“We all had each other's back but it was fun, though,” Lawrence said after ASU’s 78-64 victory. “It was worth the tech, in my eyes.”

A few minutes later, Remy Martin and Oregon (11-7, 2-3 Pac-12) guard Payton Pritchard sprung for a loose ball right in front of the Oregon bench, forcing it out of bounds seconds before the half ended. But on the play, Martin somehow ended up sitting on an open chair on the Ducks’ bench.

Oregon forward Louis King, who was sitting on the chair next to Martin, put his hand on Martin’s back to, what looked like, help him out of the seat. Martin slashed his right hand back in a split second, knocking away King’s arm as he rose to his feet under his own power.

It was that kind of game … the kind that ASU’s prepared for.

Wait, what?

“To be honest, I told our team we haven’t talked enough trash this year,” Cheatham said. “Not even because we’re that type of team that’s disrespectful or anything but our best practices are when we’re competing and guys are calling each other out and you’re taking your matchup personally.”

That message, intact with all of its honesty and craziness, likely would have flown over the heads of ASU had it not come from Cheatham, the Devils’ oldest player, and most influential leader.

With his finger hard-pressed to the pulse of the Sun Devil locker room, Cheatham talks about things like team confidence and energy as his responsibility in the same way a coach would talk about a game plan as theirs. And, in the same way, coaches do, Cheatham changes things up when the time calls for it.

After ASU’s 85-71 loss to Stanford on the road, it arrived back in Tempe in near desperation mode. Then sitting at 11-5 and just 2-2 in an abysmal Pac-12 conference, if the Devils were going to turn the corner, it needed to happen quickly.

“Practice was really quiet,” Cherry, who dropped 15 points against Oregon, said.

And that’s where Cheatham comes in.

“A couple new mixtapes dropped -- Future dropped some new stuff, a couple guys dropped some new stuff,” Cheatham said. “I knew the guys were loving it so I brought my speaker and we played in in the locker room and we all vibed before practice.”

Suddenly, ASU’s practices had the fire they had been missing for a few weeks.

The Devils started going at each other. They started jawing at their teammates matched up against them, exchanging words like they were playing a pickup game against their rivals. In the process, the intensity shot up as guys started having fun trying to show out.

“We kind of made an effort to like, we figured out that like talking junk to the other team gets us going,” Lawrence said. “We do it in practice and we’re like, ‘Let’s do it in a game.’ We did it in a game and it got us going a little bit, got us more into the game so it was fun.”

Added Cherry: “We’ve got the swagger back. When we were in practice, I knew we had our swagger back. We were just going at each other like we used and we were talking to each other and chipping at each other -- that’s why when they were chipping at us, it didn’t really make a difference, because we’ve been doing it in practice.”

It translated.

Amidst the chirping and chippiness, the Devils played what may have been their best game of the season. After a back-and-forth for over 30 minutes, ASU surged on a 19-0 run highlighted by back-to-back 3-pointers from Cherry and Lawrence and a tough finish at the rim from Luguentz Dort, who had 12 points.

“It was a momentum swing,” Cherry said. “Because they had the lead, and they kept hitting tough shots on us … we couldn’t really get over the hump and once we got over the hump. I knew we were going to break it open, so those two threes put us over the hump and we broke it open.”

After the game, Cheatham sprinted down the hallway leading to the Sun Devils’ locker room yelling, “The Sun Devils win! The Sun Devils win!” At this rate, and with performances like the one ASU had against Oregon, that may become a routine.

But Cheatham wanted to make himself clear, he doesn’t anticipate Saturday’s performance repeating itself every night. But in terms of keeping consistency with their effort and confidence, the win over the Ducks was a step forward.

“We talked about this game being a very significant game for us and (a game where we could) start to build confidence and get momentum back and reestablish who we are, letting the world know who we are,” ASU assistant coach Anthony Coleman said.

“And I think this game is going to have a lot of carryover because these guys, they’re oozing with confidence, they’re playing the right way, they’re moving the basketball with each other.”