Ka’Deem Carey remembers his first trip to Sun Devil Stadium as a UA freshman.
It wasn’t pleasant.
“I saw people banging and ripping off shirts and yelling at you, and I’m like, ‘These people really hate us,’ ” Carey recalled this week. “I’m from here, and I never knew it was like that. They were yelling, ‘You suck, your record is horrible, your jerseys are ugly, that red and blue looks like throw-up.’
“Just stuff where you’re like, ‘What?’ ”
In two games against ASU, Carey has rushed for 264 yards and a touchdown on 38 carries. And as we documented last week, Ka’Deem was almost a Sun Devil himself.
He chose the UA over ASU on national signing day in 2010. Looking back, he’s not sure what he was thinking.
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“I find it really funny because I can’t stand them now,” Carey said. “It’s like, ‘Dang, what were you thinking?’ That was just a young, crazy Ka’Deem back then trying to go there.
“It was close, that’s why I it’s so unbelievable. I can’t believe I had that as an option.”
Carey enters today’s game needing 87 yards for an even 4,000 in his career.
He has 1,559 yards and 16 touchdowns on the season and on Monday was named a finalist for the Doak Walker Award, given to the top running back in college football.
“That was pretty big,” Carey said. “I didn’t make it last year, and just to make it this year means I’m opening up some eyes, which is big.”
Carey’s backfield partner, quarterback B.J. Denker grew up in Torrance, Calif., and didn’t know nearly as much about the rivalry as Carey did.
“I didn’t know anything about either team,” Denker said. “I was a UCLA-USC guy. Once you get here, you learn quickly about what this game means and how important it is.
“On my official visit here, I was taught what Bear Down was and why we don’t like that school up north. I was completely ignorant to anything going on in Arizona being from SoCal, but you learn quickly.”
