San Diego ? The Arizona State Sun Devils don’t have to look far for motivation going into tonight’s Holiday Bowl against No. 6 Kansas State.

All they have to do is pick up a newspaper, turn to the betting line and see that they’re the longest shots of any team in the postseason.

So what’s a coach to do, other than turn it into a motivational tool?

The Sun Devils (8-5) already have turned back some long odds. They were picked to finish ninth in the Pac-10, but finished third to earn the bowl bid.

As of Thursday, they were 171/2-point underdogs to Kansas State (10-2).

“It might be a great season if we beat that spread, huh?” Arizona State coach Dirk Koetter said.

“Usually, the people that determine those kind of things don’t know what the heck they’re talking about anyway,” Koetter said. “We’ve been underdogs all year. I try not to let limits be put on us by other people.”

Although this is a huge mismatch on paper, it is, after all, the Holiday Bowl, which has a history of close, wacky finishes.

Members of the Kansas State marching band parade in front of the Arizona State dance team and marching band Thursday before the Holiday Bowl luncheon at the San Diego Convention Center. The sixth-ranked Wildcats will face the Sun Devils tonight in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

And it’s not like the Sun Devils are talentless.

Junior All-American defensive end Terrell Suggs set an NCAA record with 22 sacks and won the Lombardi Award as the nation’s top collegiate lineman.

Junior wide receiver Shaun McDonald was one of three finalists for the Biletnikoff Award. Sophomore quarterback Andrew Walter threw for a school-record 3,584 yards despite starting only nine games, and his 26 touchdown passes are second on the school’s single-season list.

Arizona State’s offense took off on Sept. 14 at Qualcomm Stadium, site of the Holiday Bowl. Walter didn’t start against San Diego State because of a sprained left knee, but came off the bench after the Sun Devils fell behind 22-0 in the second quarter. He threw four TD passes to McDonald in rallying ASU to a 39-28 win.

Kansas State coach Bill Snyder said Arizona State is the kind of team that gets better and better each time he watches them on videotape. He hopes his players realize it, too.

“If any of them misunderstand this, we’ll have to sit down and take IQ tests,” Snyder said. “They watch the same tape I do, and unless they’re sound asleep, they see what I see.”

The Wildcats are one of the nation’s hottest teams, but they’re also the highest-ranked team not playing in a BCS game.

Snyder and other school officials went to Miami before the bowl lineups were set to beg Orange Bowl officials to take them as an at-large team. They promised they’d sell a minimum of 25,000 tickets.

But Iowa got the at-large pick to the Orange Bowl to play Southern Cal, which lost 27-20 to Kansas State on Sept. 21.

On the hook for 11,500 tickets to the Holiday Bowl, the Wildcats sold only 5,500 and returned the rest.

There appears to be some lingering disappointment, as evidenced by Snyder’s slip of the tongue at a news conference on Friday.

“Our players would have certainly been excited to play in the Orange Bowl,” Snyder said. “But before the decision was made, and it was out of our control … our players had resigned themselves, not resigned themselves, that’s a poor choice of words, our players understood they’d either be playing in San Diego or in Miami and they indicated to me that they were fine with either one.”

Kansas State won its final five games by a combined score of 253-30, including consecutive wins over Iowa State (58-7) and Nebraska (49-13). But losses to Colorado and Texas — by a combined seven points — consigned the Wildcats to San Diego.

“We lost two games, plain and simple,” said senior cornerback Terence Newman, the Jim Thorpe Award winner. “We’re the ones who are responsible. We should have taken care of business. We have no one but ourselves to blame.”

Newman leads the nation’s stingiest defense, which allows only 243.9 yards and 10.6 points per game. He had five interceptions, and is also a dangerous returner, having scored twice on punt returns and once on a kickoff return.

Kansas State also has one of the country’s best running games, led by Darren Sproles (1,347 yards and 16 touchdowns) and quarterback Ell Roberson (969 yards, 13 TDs).

The Holiday Bowl is sponsored by Pacific Life.