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The ceremonial introduction of players before Wednesday's UA-ASU softball game suggested that the long-submissive Sun Devils would be defiant, not compliant.

Whether it was calculated or just a gut reaction, each of the 21 Sun Devils occupying the first base line turned their backs on a pre-game scoreboard video celebrating the Arizona Wildcats' eight NCAA championships.

As if to say: Who cares?

As if to suggest: That was yesterday.

Or perhaps they were scanning Hillenbrand Stadium's standing-room-only crowd to make sure the great Sun Devil killers, Mike Candrea and Caitlin Lowe, were really not there.

Whatever, it was an altogether rare and hellish night for the Wildcats. The top-ranked Sun Devils won a regular-season game in Tucson for the first time in 17 years, and they did not just win 8-1. They arrived.

"First time we've ever won on this field, 29 straight,'' said ASU coach Clint Myers. "We knew.''

It was so convincing that the Sun Devils hit four home runs off Taryne Mowatt, who 10 months ago was winning an ESPY for her pitching excellence.

So for the first time in two decades, the rivalry is back. Really. Back on.

"We all knew it was 29 straight, so me and the other four seniors were determined not to go out without winning here,'' said Sun Devils star outfielder Jackie Vasquez, a Catalina Foothills High School grad. "We were ready; we expected it.''

Not that this should come as breaking news. In his first two seasons at ASU, Myers coached the Sun Devils to 54-17 and 53-15 records, reached the College World Series twice and pretty much let it be known that the UA-ASU series would become the equivalent of the Duke-North Carolina basketball rivalry.

Beating Arizona in Tucson is his latest step in establishing ASU as a national-title threat.

"It's a state of mind,'' said Myers, who won six NJCAA titles coaching softball at Central Arizona College. "You have to bust your (butt), but you also have to expect something like this out of yourself.''

ASU is 42-2, and all who claimed Myers had built that record against a pre-conference series of lightweights have learned a new, if painful, math: The Sun Devils are already three games up on Arizona in the Pac-10 loss column.

Catch 'em if you can.

And, no, it is not that Candrea is off for the year, coaching the USA Olympic team. It is not that interim head coach Larry Ray is in over his head, or that Mowatt is lost without former pitching coach Nancy Evans.

It's that ASU is exceptionally talented.

The Sun Devils deploy possibly the college softball player of the year, center fielder and leadoff batter Kaitlin Cochran. That's not all; senior pitcher Katie Burkhart, who is 23-2, is probably the season's most dominant pitcher, and that is saying something, considering Texas A&M's Megan Gibson is 22-0, and Virginia Tech's Angela Tincher is 20-4 and pitched a no-hitter against Candrea's touring Olympic team.

In most years, it is Arizona that has a Cochran and a Burkhart. The Wildcats are good, a top-10 club likely bound for the College World Series, but the Sun Devils have a special look to them.

By comparison, Ray was not handed a vintage Arizona powerhouse; he is trying to replace the top three hitters from the '07 national champs; Lowe, Chelsie Mesa and Kristie Fox combined to hit 25 homers, drive in 134 runs and hit a cumulative .371 last year.

Three of the first four batters in Arizona's lineup — Brittany Lastrapes, Lauren Schutzler and Stacie Chambers — are first-year players, future stars, yes, but not yet Lowe-Fox-Mesa.

More troubling for Arizona is that Mowatt, a senior, is 16-8 and struggling. In mid-April last year, Mowatt had 23 victories and then emerged as the nation's most resourceful Big Game pitcher.

On Wednesday, the Sun Devils greeted Mowatt as if she, too, were a freshman. The first three Sun Devils reached base and scored. So much for fearing the reigning NCAA championship pitcher.

So much for all those years of losses at Hillenbrand.

Myers has recruited expertly; he knows Candrea and UCLA cannot get every good player out of Southern California, as has often been the case for 20 years. Myers, for example, signed freshman Krista Donnenwirth out of Orange County last spring, probably the nation's top power-hitting high school player.

Donnenwirth is the kind of player Arizona almost always had in its lineup. But on Wednesday, she hit a three-run homer in the first inning to give her the Pac-10 lead in RBIs with 51. You will be seeing a lot more of her.

And do not forget, the Cats must see her twice next week in a two-game set in Tempe.

Gulp.