(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)
TEMPE – When a freshly-appointed Kenny Dillingham walked up to his introductory press conference just under two years ago, Arizona State football was entering what was supposed to be a dark age. The Sun Devils had just hired the nation’s youngest head football coach, and he had a lot of work to do.
However, that press conference revealed a coach who had a plan. His plan? ‘Activate the Valley’ and bring Arizona State to the place he always thought it deserved, ideally morphing it into one of the country’s elite programs with the home atmosphere to match it. His first season was a 3-9 disaster that saw five different starting quarterbacks, but in year two under Dillingham everything has changed.
Mountain America Stadium just played host to its biggest game in over a decade, and it was a sold out madhouse that played its part in the monumental, program defining 28-23 victory for the No. 21 Sun Devils (9-2, 6-2 Big 12) over No. 14 BYU (9-2, 6-2 Big 12).
So, is the Valley activated? Dillingham thinks so.
“There’s going to be a lot more games that tickets get to that price, so if you want to be a part of them, you better buy season tickets,” Dillingham said, referring to the ticket prices that soared to over $250. “You better do it right now. You better sell it out because we’re gonna have a lot more games where this state wants to show up to, and you are gonna want to have season tickets to those things because you’re not gonna want to have to pay $300 to get in the stadium every single time.”
For the first time since 2004, the Sun Devils are undefeated at home. Dillingham wanted to Activate the Valley, and he did it the easiest way possible. Winning all your games at home is a great way to get your community engaged.
“We literally started from our foundation, like we completely erased it, eradicated it, and started new,” senior wide receiver Xavier Guillory said. “Building from the ground up, it’s just awesome to see what our work, the right work, not just working hard, but the right work that is coming to fruition.”
Guillory is one of 14 seniors playing their last game inside the stadium, and he finished the game with one pivotal catch on the day. With a little over two minutes left in the third quarter, BYU had just scored its first touchdown of the game, cutting ASU’s lead to 12 points, and on the second play of ASU’s following drive, redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt found Guillory after a fake screen to Tyson left him wide open.
61 yards later, the Sun Devils were up 19 points, and the play ended up being the game-winning score.
“It’s just so awesome that (Leavitt) trusted me on that play,” Guillory said. “It turned out to be a big, big play when it came down to the game, so it felt great.”
Guillory’s touchdown was the game-winning score, but it was far from the biggest impact by one of the departing seniors in Saturday’s game. Running back Cam Skattebo, in perfect Skattebo fashion, was a little bit late to his Senior Day run out. As his teammates began filing into the locker room, the Sacramento native came rushing out onto the field before going to hurriedly greet his family, making it just in time.
If Skattebo was a little bit off of his game pregame, he was totally on his game when it kicked off. By the end of the first half, Skattebo had already scored a hat trick, totaling three touchdowns on 96 yards rushing and accounting for close to half of ASU’s 208 total yards. His final touchdown of the half was the most impressive and the most viral, but it wasn’t because of his play on the field.
After making three defenders miss in the backfield, shaking off their weak attempts at grabbing his feet, Skattebo cut outside and practically walked into the endzone. Then, he immediately ran up and signed the football for a friend of his, earning his team a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
BYU took advantage of the better field position, scoring a field goal right before halftime. Luckily for Skattebo, he was sitting right next to his head coach at the postgame press conference when he got to explain himself.
“I talked to my team, my lineman, and I was like, ‘Next touchdown, I’m gonna go sign try to get behind me so (the referees) don’t see it,’” Skattebo said. “I made that mistake, so that definitely won’t happen again, one-time thing.”
Skattebo’s first half performance, both the good and the bad, had ASU up 21-3 at the break, a similar situation to last week in Manhattan when the Sun Devils entered the break up 21-0. Last week, ASU had a much worse second half compared to the first, setting up a Kansas State comeback that eventually fell short.
One week later, the ASU defense faltered once again, allowing the Cougars to storm back into the game. Spanning BYU’s final drive of the first half to its third drive of the first half, the Cougars scored 23 points in just over 12 minutes of game time, vaulting them back into the game.
With 2:34 remaining in the game, the Cougars got the ball after a failed fourth down attempt from the Sun Devils. Redshirt junior quarterback Jake Retzlaff took over on his own 11-yard line down five, with two timeouts, the two-minute warning and a chance to send the sold out stands home sad.
However, Retzlaff missed his target, overthrowing redshirt sophomore receiver Parker Kingston on a slant route, and the ball landed right in the gut of redshirt sophomore defensive back Javan Robinson.
“Just make one play the rest of the game, and we win,” Dillingham said when asked what he told his players during BYU’s comeback. “And we got it; we got the play to win the football game, and that’s just so special.”
The Robinson interception essentially ended the game, but it didn’t completely ice it. On ASU’s final offensive play from scrimmage, Leavitt ran around and tried to run the clock down to 0:00 by chucking the ball in the air and waiting for it to come back down. At first, the clock hit triple zero, and the students that security had no chance at stopping came flooding on the field.
However, after a review, much to Dillingham’s chagrin, the referees put a singular second back on the clock. The fans left the field just to come back a few minutes later when BYU’s hail mary came up a few yards short.
Game over. Field stormed. Valley Activated.
“Come to Arizona State because there’s gonna be a lot more of that going forward,” Dillingham said.
