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Mark the calendar: Some ASU games to look out for next season

The upcoming ASU athletic season is full of intriguing games

20180208 Sparky celebrating

Sparky celebrates ASU's last-second 80-78 win over the USC Trojans on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe.


Are you missing Saturdays under the lights at Sun Devil Stadium or the roar from a capacity crowd at Wells Fargo Arena in the middle of a hot and monsoon-filled summer?

Well, the State Press sports department can’t speed up the time until the upcoming athletic season begins, but what we can do is try to let ASU fans and students know what dates to circle on their calendars for big games in the 2018-19 season. 

Over the last month or so, the ASU athletic department has released a variety of schedules for the forthcoming athletic year. 

With big home games and some daunting road tests, the fall and winter seasons for sports can’t come soon enough, and we are here to let you know which games you should get ready for.

Football:

Earlier this week, it was announced that ASU football scheduled a future home-and-home matchup with Texas A&M in 2026 and 2027, marking the third SEC foe that the Sun Devils have scheduled for future years.

ASU will play a home-and-home series with Mississippi State in 2024 and 2025, and they will play LSU in a home-and home slate that begins in 2029.



“This agreement with Texas A&M University provides us with another elite future series with a Power 5 opponent,” ASU Vice President of Athletics Ray Anderson said in a statement. “This agreement complements our future series’ with LSU, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Oklahoma State, and BYU.”

As for the upcoming season, ASU will begin its home-and-home series with Michigan State. The first game of the set will be played at Sun Devil Stadium on September 8 at 7:45 p.m. MST. 

Additionally, ASU will look for redemption after a home loss against San Diego State last season when they travel to San Diego to take on the Aztecs at SDCCU Stadium on Sep. 15.

For some notable conference games, the Sun Devils will play at home against Stanford, Utah and a UCLA team that is entering its first year under former Oregon and NFL head coach Chip Kelly.

ASU will go on the road to take on USC, Arizona, Washington and Oregon. The Oregon and Arizona games will be the final two contests of the regular season in November, and the USC game will be in late October.

Basketball:

As he enters his fourth season in Tempe, one of the staples of ASU men’s basketball head coach Bobby Hurley has been his ability to schedule extremely difficult non-conference opponents. In 2018-19, the story will be no different.

The full men’s basketball schedule has not been completely finished, but some of the team’s noteworthy oppositions include Mississippi State, Nevada, Georgia, Vanderbilt and Kansas.

Kansas will play at ASU right before Christmas on Dec. 22, rounding out a home-and-home series.

“I love it,” said Hurley of ASU’s grueling non-conference slate. “I work with my staff on that ... It’s very challenging just to play three true road games against two SEC opponents and to have a neutral site game against a top-10 team in Nevada, and you have Kansas coming here. It’s a lot of exciting things.”

On the women’s side, ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne isn’t too different from Hurley as she too looks for high-caliber competition when it comes to scheduling non-conference adversaries.

In a Pac-12 conference that already oozes with elite teams, ASU will take on Baylor, Louisville, Colorado State, Kansas State and Fresno State in non-conference action.

Hockey, Volleyball, Soccer:

The ASU men’s hockey team will have one of the most difficult schedules in the entire country. 

The Sun Devils will play at No. 8 Cornell, at No. 10 Boston University and end the regular season at No. 18 Minnesota. ASU will have home games against No. 19 Boston College, No. 3 Ohio State, and they could align with last year’s NCAA National Champion Minnesota-Duluth in a tournament at Gila River Arena in late December.

On the soccer field, ASU will begin conference play on September 22 with a slate that is highlighted by home games against premiere competition, including the defending NCAA national champion Stanford Cardinal, who will come to Tempe on Oct. 13.

In volleyball, ASU will take part in a top-flight Pac-12 schedule that features the regular season concluding with games against UCLA, USC and Stanford. All three of those contests will be played at Wells Fargo Arena.

From top to bottom, and from conference to non-conference play, the schedules for fall and winter sports appear to be loaded with intriguing games, and they will all begin in just a matter of time. 


Reach the reporter at atbell1@asu.edu or follow @AndrewBell7 on Twitter.

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