ASU Basketball: Sun Devils schedule home-and-home series with San Diego State

On Friday, it was announced that Arizona State will be taking part in a home-and-home series with San Diego State over the next two seasons.

The Sun Devils play host first, as the Aztecs come to Tempe in December, and ASU will head out to Viejas Arena in San Diego during the 2021-22 season.

There is also a possibility that the two schools play twice next year, as SDSU is in the tournament field with the Sun Devils in the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii.

San Diego State has won the Mountain West Conference four of the last seven seasons, and they have averaged just under 25 wins per season in recent years. Before the 2019-20 schedule was canceled, the Aztecs were the last remaining unbeaten in college basketball before falling to UNLV in late February.

The last time the two schools met was in 2017 when Bobby Hurley’s squad upended SDSU 90-68 at The Bank, as the team was en route to an undefeated non-conference slate and the beginning of “Guard U” with a group that featured Tra Holder, Shannon Evans, and Kodi Justice.

Since coming to Tempe, Hurley has a consistent track record of scheduling grueling non-conference matchups to prepare his team for the postseason and receive early measuring stick games.

The upcoming season will be no different, as the Sun Devils also recently scheduled a home-and-home with SMU of the American Conference, per college basketball insider Jon Rothstein.

That means that the non-conference schedule already features Creighton, BYU, San Diego State, SMU, and the Diamond Head Classic Tournament. Their only road game out of those contests is at Creighton, and the BYU game will be played at Talking Stick Resort Arena in downtown Phoenix.

“This is a big part of what we do,” said coach Bobby Hurley in a statement from Sun Devil Athletics. “We are thrilled to matchup with San Diego State the next two seasons and add them to an already challenging schedule that now includes 20 Pac-12 games. We take great pride in making every effort to play one of the most demanding and toughest non-conference schedules in the nation.”