ASU Football: Sun Devils Cannot Overcome Early Deficit, Fall to USC 31-26

(Photo: Marlee Smith/WCSN)

Arizona State lost its third straight game in a heartbreaker to USC on Saturday afternoon by a final score of 31-26. It drops the Devils to 5-4 overall and 2-4 in Pac-12 play.

It was a game that ASU should not have been in. Backup freshman quarterback Joey Yellen stepped in after starter Jayden Daniels was declared out before the game due to an unspecified knee injury suffered in the UCLA game two weeks ago. The Devils’ defense gave up four touchdowns in the first quarter, dug themselves into a 28-7 deficit at the end of the first and things weren’t looking too good.

The Sun Devils clawed their way back to make it close but nine penalties for 82 yards, dropped passes, and a game-clinching interception by USC with under a minute to go sealed the Devils’ inevitable fate.

“Just too many missed opportunities,” head coach Herm Edwards said. “We are playing against us. You can’t play against us. You have to play against the opponent. We dropped a lot of balls on that last drive. You can’t drop those passes in big games and big moments.”

Arguably the two biggest drops of the game were a Frank Darby two-point conversion attempt that would have put the Devils down only within a field goal with 8:54 left in the game and a Tommy Hudson drop over the middle during the last drive that would have driven the Devils even further into USC territory.

ASU had a chance to go in front with 3:29 left and no timeouts from its own 10. Yellen drove the Devils all the way to the USC 32 with 47 seconds left but a tipped pass and interception by Christian Rector sealed the game for the Trojans, improving them to 6-4 (5-2 Pac-12).

“It’s just a little hump that we’re stuck in right now,” Darby said, who caught three passes for 86 yards and two touchdowns in the game. “We really need to just get over this hump. I don’t know if it was because of the bye week, the time we got off, I don’t know, but it’s something that we just got to fix.

“I felt like we were ready for this game. I felt like we pushed for it. We came out like it was the UCLA game and we didn’t expect for them to do that. Now, we got to just start picking each other up.”

With Daniels still nursing a knee injury, the 6-3, 210 pound Yellen from Mission Viejo, California, readied himself for Saturday to make his first career collegiate start.

“I had a pretty good idea Tuesday [that I would be starting],” Yellen said. “During that, it was like you’re playing barring some miraculous healing. I got the full week to prepare and I felt like they prepared me well. A lot of the reads were there but a couple of throws I just want to have back. I felt like we had a good plan going and we executed it for the most part.”

He completed 28 of 44 passes for 292 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions and played very well under the circumstances, much to his head coach’s approval.

“He was put in a tough spot,” Edwards said. “That’s a pretty athletic defense [USC’s] got. He doesn’t have Jayden’s skills as far as running and making plays with his legs. [But] he’s not afraid to throw the vertical ball down the field. He might take more chances than Jayden does with the ball. He’ll throw it. He did a good job.”

The consistent theme, though, with Arizona State this season has been starting slow in the first quarter and having to play from behind. After ASU deferred the coin toss to USC, the Trojans put up an opening drive touchdown and proceeded to score three more in the quarter as well as 315 total yards of offense. ASU gained only one yard in the first quarter, making it difficult for ASU to overcome.

“We don’t score a lot of points in the first quarter,” Edwards. “We got to find a way to do a better job. We’ve actually done this twice where we defer the ball to the other team and they take the ball and drive it right down the field on our defense. We got to stop that. The players have to stop that. We just gave them a big lead early and we couldn’t overcome it.”

Edwards told his guys after the game that they need to stop shooting themselves in the foot during games.

“I told them once we start deciding to stop beating ourselves, we’ll win a football game,” Edwards said. “A lot of this was self-inflicted fouls. When you have that many guys playing, there’s errors. I don’t know. They’re asked to play a lot and you can’t get mad them but they need to learn. And once they learn, we’ll be a pretty good football team.”

Darby agrees with his head coach and wants to finish the season out strong.

“It’s something we got to get over and figure out so we don’t lose no more games,” Darby said. “We got three left. This is not the season we were expecting. We didn’t work this hard to come out like this.”

ASU will play at Oregon State next Saturday on Nov. 16 in its final road game of the season in Corvallis.

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