Downtown Tempe felt swollen on Friday, Nov. 28 — the kind of Black Friday crowd where Mill Avenue traffic crawled the entire streets of downtown.
Shoppers spilled out of storefronts with bags in both hands, and the air carried that familiar mix of holiday impatience and Arizona sunshine.
But on the south end of town, Sun Devil Athletics ran on an entirely different clock.
The Arizona State Sun Devils stacked a three-game slate. Women’s basketball tipped off at 10:30 a.m. at Desert Financial Arena, and a few hours later, at 3 p.m., Mullett Arena filled for ASU hockey.
By nightfall, with the echoes of puck-on-glass still hanging over Packard Drive, Mountain America Stadium prepared for a 7:00 p.m. football game.
Even with the chaos surrounding Tempe, head coach Greg Powers and the Sun Devils topped the Ohio State Buckeyes, 3-2 in overtime.
Related: Greg Powers Q&A: Ohio State Preview, Thanksgiving & More
“It was a gritty, gutty win for us,” Powers said. “I felt like we deserved it. I felt like we did a lot of really good things tonight. We just couldn’t seem to find the back of the net.”
After the Sun Devils split last weekend’s series against the No. 3 Denver Pioneers, they’ve now won two in a row, moving to 6-8-1, looking for the holiday weekend to be a turning point in the season.
Sun Devils Top Buckeyes 3-2 in Overtime
The Buckeyes opened Friday’s matinee with an early punch, striking less than five minutes in on a clean finish from senior winger — and Scottsdale, Arizona native — Davis Burnside.
Burnside beat ASU senior goaltender Connor Hasley cleanly off the rush, giving Ohio State a quick 1–0 lead and setting the tone inside Mullett.
Arizona State answered before the end of the first period. On the power play 2025 first-round draft pick Cullen Potter snapped a shot through traffic to tie the game 1–1.
The goal extended Potter’s point streak to three games, bringing the 18-year-old to 11 points in 15 games on the season.
“He was already playing really well,” Powers said. “Now it’s just starting to go in for him, and things are starting to happen on the score sheet. We don’t put that pressure on our players. They just have to play the right way and play hard and do the right things.”
The Buckeyes’ captain, Burnside, added his second of the afternoon midway through the period, once again slipping free in the slot off a turnover and beating Hasley for a 2–1 Ohio State lead.
The Sun Devils trailed entering the third period. An oddity that sees Powers’ squad typically leading entering the third period.
After both teams traded trips to the penalty box, sophomore winger Noah Powell scored to even things up against his former team, with 7:03 left in the third period.
“Just trying to get pucks to the net,” Powers said. “That’s what we told him in the second. That’s a really good shot, and it’s gonna go in a lot more than you think.”
The game then headed to overtime, where Potter would find Cruz Lucius for the winner in the desert.
“It’s kind of tough because you don’t know whether you want to be a little bit unselfish or not,” Lucius said. “I just saw the five hole kind of open and then just shot really as hard as I can in there.”
ASU returns to Mullett tomorrow, Nov. 29, at 5:00 p.m. and hopes to avoid the chaos that has surrounded them amidst Black Friday as they look to get back to their winning ways ahead of the holidays.
“I think, all of our games, even the losses we’ve we’ve really been in it,” Lucius said. “I think bottom line is, find ways to get, get in the back of the net. It’s just being confident and coming together as a team, even if we’re even if we’re down.”
