Meet the Cambridge brothers helping ASU’s basketball program soar to the top

TEMPE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) -- ASU is preparing to host #5 UCLA Thursday night. If the Sun Devils can pull off the upset and beat the Bruins in Tempe for the second year in a row, it’s a good bet the Cambridge brothers played a big part in it. Nick King talked to “Dez” and “Dev” one-on-two ahead of the game.

Brotherly love has the Sun Devils soared this season. Desmond Cambridge Jr. is ASU’s leader in points and threes per game. He’s been twice the PAC-12 player of the week already. While his brother, Devan Cambridge, is two years younger, two inches taller, and third in scoring. He’s played second in blocks and rebounds and first in finishes above the rim.

“At any time if he’s close to the rim, he’s like this, just throw the ball to him. It’s really not that hard,” Desmond said. “Have you thrown one to him,” King asked him. Devan uttered, “not yet. He got on me last game, Oregon State.” “He don’t have no vision, man. He don’t got no love for big bro. It is what it is though. I get my own buckets,” Desmond told us.

Big bro gets plenty of buckets: recently hitting 2,000 points for his career. When little bro was asked about that post-game, Devan chuckled, “he sucks.”

“I would expect nothing less like I get we get enough praise from social media from other people telling us we don’t need the good stuff, we need how can we continue to get better? And you know when because it makes it makes a difference when we say it and he says I suck. That makes me want to get better when someone else says I suck. I don’t really care. So you know, I need him to say it, you know,” said Desmond.

The Cambridge boys are playing together for the first time: Dez is transferring from Nevada, while Dev is from Auburn.

“Dev, you were saying yesterday that you guys wanted to come in and change the culture and you feel like you’re doing what? How have you done that,” King asked. Without hesitation, Devan responded: “Really just leading by example. Like just, I think like my work ethic and you know, the showing that I play hard, like its contagious.”

“How we come in every day and just the morals we live by and how we carry ourselves because, like you have to morph to that because at the end of the day, we’re very, you know, alpha male-ish so if you’re not on the same type of program that we’re on, we’re gonna say something to you and if you don’t like that, that’s really your problem. You got to figure out how to revolve around us and we want to win. That’s all we care about is winning and team chemistry and if you know the top yeah, we come in like that. You gotta bring that same kind of energy or you’re not we’re not going to be able to coexist.”

Fueled by the contagious Cambridge energy, Arizona State is off to its best overall start in 14 years, at 15-3: the best conference start in more than 40 years, at 6-1.

“When you guys both decide you’re coming to Tempe and play for ASU; did you imagine that it would look like this?” King asked.

“I wasn’t gonna lose. I’ve never had a losing season, but I don’t think there’s gonna be this much success and just playing this hard, you know, I’m happy of what we accomplished. You know, we’re still gonna continue to go guard that,” Devan explained.

“I’ve never played with a group of guys this talented. And when I you know, got here on campus and everyone else was here. I said, yeah, we have everything we need. Yeah, from since I got on this campus, this is what I expected. So really, we are underachieving right now in my eyes. We shouldn’t have lost some of the games we lost and so yeah, I really push for greatness. So we we’re on the way. We on the way.”

Dez and Dev are also roommates for the first time in a long time.

“What’s that, like living together,” King asked. “Sucks. His air fryer makes the most. it sounds like a plane has crashed and literally, and he uses that to cook at least every day. So that would probably be you know, number one on my pet peeve list,” Desmond said.

“Is he cooking for you at least,” King asked. “No. And I have a air fryer that he can use literally the same exact one. And he just wants to use his, because it’s his. Like, it’s broken. He should throw it away,” Desmond explained.

All in all, it’s brotherly love in Tempe.

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