(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
After all the pomp and circumstance of Senior Day at Sun Devil Stadium, the recognition, the family photos, the bouquets of flowers, it was time to play a football game.
A football game with major implications for Arizona State (6-4, 4-3 Pac-12) in its quest for a Pac-12 South title.
In a match-up against an underperforming but talented UCLA Bruin team (2-8, 2-5 Pac-12), the Sun Devils fought and clawed their way to a 31-28 victory, keeping their hopes for a Pac-12 South title alive for another week.
“As I told our team this week… this was going to be the hardest game they play all year, and it turned out to be that,” head coach Herm Edwards said post-game.
While this was a day meant for every Sun Devil senior on the roster, there is one in particular who the day seemed to center around given the position he plays, how much adversity he has been through in his near-five years on campus, and what he still has in front of him to accomplish in this final go around.
Manny Wilkins and his Sun Devil teammates have been slowly building toward this type of moment since he took over the starting quarterback job in the fall of 2016.
Despite there being two critical football games still to play in 2018, as the book closes on his career at Sun Devil Stadium, all Wilkins could do was be thankful for the journey he has been on.
“Life can take you so many different ways, and if you just trust God’s plan and stay the course, good things happen,” Wilkins said fighting back tears after the game. “I’m blessed to be a part of this football team, it just means the world to me.”
In sticking with the mindset of every athlete and coach, a win is a win. But this final home victory of 2018 was not without one gutsy performance after another for the Maroon and Gold, as a cascade of injuries and a crucial ejection put this group to the ultimate test.
After losing freshman linebacker Merlin Robertson to a targeting call early in the third quarter, along with losing starting Tillman safety Jalen Harvey to a stinger among others, Edwards’ “next man up” mentality for his football team rose to the occasion.
“The one thing we’ve taught them around here is once you go in, and I’ve told players this ever since I’ve been a coach, you’re a starter,” Edwards said. “I think they learned something today… every time you put a young player in the game, they’re going to benefit down the road.”
The ejection of Robertson seemed to be a turning point in the team’s mentality, with cornerback Chase Lucas intercepting a Wilton Speight pass three plays later, which subsequently set up Wilkins and the offense to march 76 yards down the field in seven plays for a touchdown, making the score 24-14 Sun Devils halfway through the third.
“We know how valuable [Robertson] is on the defensive side,” defensive lineman Tyler Johnson said post-game. “Coach always tells us, ‘The next person is up.’ Khaylan [Kearse-Thomas] came in, and we just kept it going.”
In a back-and-forth affair all afternoon, the game came down to the final possession for the Bruins, where the emotion of Senior Day carried over to the fans at Sun Devil Stadium.
Following an ASU three-and-out returning the ball to Speight and the offense with no timeouts remaining, the Bruin quarterback took a sack from Johnson, followed by two consecutive false start penalties with the home crowd in an absolute frenzy.
The penalties resulted in consecutive ten-second runoffs with UCLA being out of timeouts, and when Speight’s last-ditch effort fell incomplete in front of Devin Asiasi, ASU was walking off the field with its first three-game win streak of the season.
“All of a sudden, we had a twelfth person in the stadium, and it was the fans,” Edwards said. “They got what, two penalties for twenty-two seconds running off the clock? Couldn’t have asked for anything more than that.”
With all of the emotion of Senior Day now behind them, Arizona State will turn its attention to its final road trip of the season, with games coming in Autzen Stadium against the Oregon Ducks before a trip down south to Arizona Stadium for the Territorial Cup.
If they emerge victorious in both, they will have a date with the Pac-12 North champion at Levi’s Stadium on November 30th.
Despite their goal being increasingly closer to becoming reality, this Sun Devil team has learned the hard way this season that the most important task is the one in front of them.
“Week-by-week. Week-by-week,” Wilkins said. “We know what’s at the end, we’d be foolish if we didn’t think about it, but we got a tough game next week that we got to take care of, and we all know what comes after that.”
Bobby Kraus is a football beat writer for the Walter Cronkite Sports Network. You can follow him on Twitter @bobbykraus22
