After watching Arizona State dismantle Jackson State 84-41 in its season opener, Molly Miller has reason to be excited about what lies ahead. The head coach, however, refuses to get carried away, and she has sent that same warning to her team.
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With a more talented roster than she had last season, Miller is already challenging her players to prove that their newfound talent will not come at the expense of the relentless work ethic that defined her first year in Tempe.
“I think there was kind of the opposite of last year,” Miller said in her postgame interview, shared on the Sun Devils YouTube. “We had to work really hard, and I’m not sure we were the most talented team. This year, we’re pretty talented, but we can’t let our edge suffer because of that. So I want to see hard work day in and day out, a competitive edge, a relentlessness to this team. We can’t always rely on our talent. You can win both ways, but I’ve always said hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. So this team really has to walk into that.”
When Miller took over the Sun Devils last season, she really did inherit a fractured program coming off a dismal 10-22 record. She did not have a roster full of high-profile Power Four recruits or a deep bench, so to make Arizona State competitive, she had to build its identity on pure, exhaustive effort.
Because they could not simply out-talent or out-shoot opponents, the 2025/26 Sun Devils relied on what Miller calls “effort statistics.” They ran a relentless, high-pressure full-court press designed to break the opponent’s rhythm, force turnovers, and create chaotic transition points. They ground out games through hustle, grit, and defensive identity rather than offensive explosiveness.
On paper, they were unranked, picked near the bottom of their conference, and largely overlooked. Yet by buying into Miller’s work ethic, they went 24-11, a 14-win improvement on the year before. It started with an explosive 15-0 start and ended with a resilient run into the NCAA Tournament First Four, earning Miller some financial incentives.
Ahead of this season, Miller made sure to bring in reinforcements, especially because three of her primary starting guards graduated. She aggressively rebuilt the backcourt, reloading the roster with a top-five national transfer class alongside an impressive group of incoming freshmen.
Madi Morson arrives after handling an immense scoring burden at Central Michigan, where she averaged 20.1 points per game, won the 2026 MAC Player of the Year award, and shot an elite 39.2 percent from three. Rashunda “Spider” Jones, who earned All-Big Ten Defensive honors, also joined, along with Ruby Whitehorn, who scored in double figures 23 times in the SEC while repeatedly leading her team in blocks and scoring.
However, despite all that reinforcement, the mentality Miller instilled last season appears to have carried over, as the opening win showed. When Jackson State jumped out to an early 11-2 lead, the Sun Devils dug in defensively, never “tucked their tails,” and responded with a crushing 13-0 run to take control. They also overwhelmed Jackson State on the boards, outrebounding them 51-29 and turning those second chances into 38 points in the paint to Jackson State’s 12.
With 12 steals and 15 forced turnovers, the team played with exactly the scrap-and-claw mentality Miller demanded, showing they are not simply relying on their recruiting rankings to win games. And of course, Miller was pleased with the performance.
Arizona State now looks to build on it against the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. That is where Miller’s message matters most: the need to carry that effort forward and not ease off just because the talent is there.
“We Wanted to Be the Aggressor”: Molly Miller Praises Arizona State’s Energy After Dominant Season Opener
Molly Miller wants Arizona State to play with an edge opponents will struggle to match. After watching her team dominate Jackson State in its opener, she believes the Sun Devils are beginning to understand exactly what that means.
“We wanted to be the aggressor,” Miller said. “I want them to be aggressive rebounding. I want them to rebound out of their area, I want to scrap and fight and claw. And I always say every 50-50 ball is 100% ours. So if there’s a ball bouncing on the ground, we’re gonna go get it. We’re gonna come up with it. So I think that aggressiveness showed up tonight.”
For Miller, the slick plays and the three-pointers may look good to the eye, but what fans and supporters really want to see is energy.
“Are you guys like us running, hitting threes, getting up, getting steals? How many turnovers did we force? Fifteen. Some of these effort statistics are what fans want to see. Fans don’t want to come out and see golf clapping on the sidelines. So our energy was really good today. They don’t want to see this kind of nonchalant attitude. So I think they locked in, and I saw a glimpse of a team that I’m excited to watch grow this season,” Miller said.
And so the message is clear: there is no room for any drop in intensity or effort. The Sun Devils have to keep playing the way that brought them so much success last season. With the added talent now in the building, the early indication is that this team could end up in a better place than they did last season.