Rock bottom.

When the ASU women’s basketball team lost to Washington in Seattle last month to fall to 0-3 in the Pac-10, the Sun Devils arguably hit the lowest point the program has seen in three years.

That may seem like an exaggeration, but when the Sun Devils hadn’t lost a regular-season conference game to a team that wasn’t Stanford or California since 2005-06, dropping three in a row to squads outside of northern California was enough to make it seem like the sky was falling.

Thursday night, ASU will start the second round of Pac-10 play with a home date with UW, hoping to get revenge against the Huskies and show that its 0-3 start in conference play was merely a blip on the radar.

“We’re fired up,” ASU senior guard Danielle Orsillo said. “[UW] did not see Sun Devil defense, so that’s it right there. That’s our answer — we’re going to play Sun Devil defense and Sun Devil basketball, and we’re going to take care of business. Everyone’s pumped up … we still feel that loss.”

The Sun Devils come into the game having won five out of their last six games since digging themselves into that 0-3 hole, including a dramatic 63-61 comeback win at Cal last Saturday.

“[The last UW game] was not only a wakeup call, but [we also just] needed to look inside ourselves and say, ‘Who are we and what are we willing to do to respond?’” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “We came off that [road trip] and came home, and people just got in [the gym] extra and they worked harder. They knew we [were] not where we [wanted] to be at all.”

UW has been going in the exact opposite direction, as the Huskies have dropped four out of five since sweeping ASU and UA in early January, with their only victory coming against a Washington State team that is winless in conference play.

On paper, the key to beating the Huskies this time around seems pretty simple: stop senior guard Sami Whitcomb.

But that’s easier said than done.

Whitcomb has been a thorn in the side of the Sun Devils for the past two seasons. She has averaged almost 21 points the last three times she has faced ASU, including a 26-point outing in last month’s 62-56 win.

However, the Sun Devils did limit her to just seven points the last time she played in Tempe last February.

“She’s a great player, but she’s very streaky and she plays very emotionally,” Orsillo said. “Up in Seattle, you’ve got your whole crowd behind you. Hopefully, we can just guard her and keep her points down and guard the rest of the team, and we’re going to win the basketball game.”

Turner Thorne also said she hopes her team can draw from Saturday’s lockdown defensive performance against Cal senior guard Alexis Gray-Lawson. The Sun Devils held her to just 14 points after she had been averaging more than 30 per game during the Golden Bears’ last five contests.

“Our perimeter defense has been consistently getting better, basically from off that Washington trip,” Turner Thorne said. “[The Cal game] really was our first good game where we sort of kept somebody below their average, and we need to build on that.”

ASU should have the clear advantage on the inside, as no Husky frontcourt player averages more than 7.3 points and 4.4 rebounds per game (sophomore Mackenzie Argens). UW also ranks last in the Pac-10 in offensive rebounds (35.7 per game).

Junior forward Becca Tobin is the Sun Devils’ second-leading scorer (10.5 points per game), while Tobin, sophomore center Kali Bennett and senior forward Kayli Murphy each grab over five rebounds per game.

The Sun Devils will then face a WSU team on Saturday afternoon that has yet to get in the win column during the conference season, even though every Pac-10 game but two has been decided by 10 points or less.

“They’re explosive, versus in the past where maybe they were more kind of a grind-it-out [team],” Turner Thorne said of WSU. “They’re transitioning, they’re pressing, [and] they’re a team that can cause some problems for you. They’re as athletic as they’ve been since I’ve been in the Pac-10.”

The Cougars have had solid recruiting classes under third-year coach June Daugherty but have still struggled on both ends of the floor this season, ranking last in Pac-10 in both field goal percentage (.342) and field-goal percentage defense (.446).

April Cook leads the Cougars in scoring (13.8 points per game), while freshman guard Kiki Moore leads the Pac-10 in steals (3.1 per game) and also averages 13.2 points per game.

Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu