(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)
TEMPE — Coming off of a season opening blowout win over Wyoming, Arizona State football head coach Kenny Dillingham was happy to celebrate a well deserved victory but wanted to remind his players of the next test they were scheduled to face.
Sure, the largest margin of victory in nearly four years was nothing to scoff at, but the next test was one ASU had never passed. In their first five tries against an SEC team, the Sun Devils came up short all five times. And, although Mississippi State was voted to finish 15 out of 16 teams in the SEC Preseason Media Poll, its players still possess that vaunted SEC size and strength.
The Bulldogs’ seven defensive tackles average 302 pounds compared to the Sun Devils’ defensive tackles, who are an average of 287 pounds. However, ASU (2-0) set out to bully the Bulldogs despite the size disadvantage and succeeded, dominating Mississippi State (1-1) in the trenches and coming away with the 30-23 victory.
“Bullying dudes, grown men, that are 300 pounds, that’s fun to us,” senior running back Cam Skattebo said postgame. “That’s fun to the front seven and a running back.”
Middle Eight Makes a Major Difference
It is a head coach’s job to find the things on which to critique his players. After a win like last week’s 48-7 win over Wyoming, that job becomes a little bit harder. However, the one thing that Dillingham was extremely upset about despite the dominant win was how his team handled the middle eight minutes of the game.
The middle eight minutes of the game are some of the most crucial in football, especially when you win the coin toss and defer the opening kickoff like ASU likes to do.
The last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half is a time when the team receiving the second half kickoff can exert the most control on the outcome of the game.
Last week, ASU took over with 2:35 remaining in the first half but failed to drive the full length of the field, resulting in a missed field goal to close out the half. The failure to convert on that drive drove Dillingham to visualize a specific situation with his players during Friday’s practice.
“We’re gonna get the ball back with six minutes, and our goal is to score with under 25 seconds and get seven points,” Dillingham said. “That’s our goal. Then we get the ball in the second half and go score again.”
Following a fourth-and-1 stop by the ASU defense, the situation that Dillingham envisioned came to life. Up 20-3 with a little under six minutes remaining in the half, the Sun Devils’ offense trotted back onto the field with a clear goal in mind. It was laid out for them just yesterday. Take the ball with under six minutes left and score a touchdown, leaving the Bulldogs no time to do anything else.
11 plays, eight handoffs, and 68 yards later, redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt drove into the end zone on a quarterback sneak, scoring his second rushing touchdown of the game and putting the Sun Devils up 24 points heading into halftime.
But that was only half of the equation. Coming out of halftime, the Sun Devils once again drove down the field, and although they didn’t score a touchdown, ASU melted over eight minutes off the clock, and redshirt sophomore placekicker Ian Hershey nailed a 46-yard field goal to put the Sun Devils up 27 points or four scores.
All in all, the middle eight turned into the middle 14 minutes for ASU, resulting in a crucial 10 points.
“That’s what we talked about, and we executed it,” Dillingham said. “We responded from last week, unbelievable job. That 14 minutes straight of our offense on the field. That’s the difference in the football game. You take away those 10 points in the middle there, and we don’t go into halftime with a 24-point lead. We don’t get to a 27 point lead, so unbelievable job by those guys.”
Recovering From Second-Half Lull
The three points from Hershey’s field goal to open the first half were the final points ASU would score for the rest of the night. After scoring on five straight games to begin the game, the Sun Devils would go scoreless for the final 21 minutes of the game.
With a 27-point lead, ASU got comfortable. The discipline and aggressiveness that ASU displayed in the first half began to show signs of leakage.
Following Hershey’s field goal, the Bulldogs finally strung together their first good drive of the game, going 12 plays and 75 yards in just over four minutes and cutting ASU’s lead to 20. ASU went a quick three-and-out on its next drive, taking just 59 seconds off of the clock.
Quickly developing a rhythm, the Bulldogs marched down the field for the second consecutive drive, and this time, they did it quickly. In a little over two minutes, Mississippi State drove 50 yards in eight plays, and senior quarterback Blake Shapen found senior running back Davon Booth for the 15-yard score. In seven minutes, ASU’s lead went from 27 to 13.
Finally, after ASU failed to score on their following two possessions, Mississippi State flipped the game on its head. With under six minutes remaining, Shapen hit junior receiver Kevin Coleman on an eight-yard curl route. Coleman made two men miss, and 80 yards later, ASU was all of a sudden in a one-possession game with over five minutes left on the clock.
“I’m just excited for when we have to get to respond to some adversity because we didn’t have any bad adversity tonight,” Dillingham said after the Wyoming win.
The moment Dillingham was waiting for had arrived. Despite dominating the Bulldogs in almost every major statistical category, ASU needed one final drive to ice the game, so it went to its own Bulldog.
Dillingham and offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo handed the ball to Skattebo seven straight times on the final drive, capped off by a 39-yard rush that saw the Rio Linda, California native bounce outside and race down the sideline. Skattebo had a chance at the touchdown he had been searching for all game, but he went down short of the goal line, clinching the win for ASU.
First adversity dealt with.
“I’m emotional, I’m passionate, so the team’s gonna feed off of that,” Dillingham said. “I think when you’re like that, you’ve got to be able to handle the lows better, and I got to handle the lows better. Our team’s going to handle the lows better, but the fact that we could get out of the low was something we couldn’t do last year.
“We couldn’t figure out how to get out of the low, and winning games is all about managing the highs and the low and the waves of the game. We did have too many lows there in the middle, but the fact we figured it out is something that we needed.”
