Sun Devils preaching focus ahead of Mississippi State: ‘You’ve got to learn how to win.’

(Photo: Marina Williams/WCSN)

Most members of Arizona State football were riding high after the team’s season-opening victory on Saturday, an attitude that wasn’t endorsed by coaches but was somewhat unsurprising. The Sun Devils’ 48-7 beatdown of Wyoming, who was fresh off a nine-win campaign and projected to make a bowl game this season, marked their largest margin of victory in nearly four years and provided great signs of improvement in year two under head coach Kenny Dillingham.

So what?

Rewind about nine months, and ASU had just wrapped up its second straight 3-9 campaign which featured several lopsided defeats to Utah, Oregon and rival Arizona. Prior to this fall, it was picked to finish dead last in the Big 12 Media Preseason Poll for 2024. In an ESPN article published in late August that ranked all 134 FBS teams into tiers, writer David Hale placed Dillingham’s squad fell into tier 16, tabbed “The kids table of the Power 4.”

Sure, the 1-0 Sun Devils may be well on their way to proving their ample doubters wrong. But a promising second-year jump isn’t close to being apparent after just one week. Dillingham made that clear after a subpar practice on Tuesday where his group displayed what he thought was far too much comfort.

“We haven’t done anything,” Dillingham said. “We’re still a nobody. We’ve got to get that out of our heads, that we played a really good football game. Who cares?”

Dillingham noted that as the morning rolled on, the Sun Devils’ level of effort increased. He intentionally made Tuesday’s practice one of the most difficult since fall camp began but was overall disappointed with the result despite players focusing more down the stretch.

It was a different story on Wednesday, as the team showed up to Kajikawa Practice Fields with concentration and intensity. That is, except for one position group — Hines Ward’s wide receivers corps, which kicked things off similarly to how the entire squad did a day prior.

About halfway through the morning, Ward had seen enough dropped passes from his wide receivers while they were working with the quarterbacks and lit into the group. From that moment on, the wideouts found a groove, but the damage would have already been done had they started an actual game in such a sluggish fashion.

“We finished strong, but that’s not good enough,” Ward said. “The way we started practice off wasn’t up to the standards that it should be, that I want us to be. We can’t start slow. We would’ve looked up, and it would’ve been 21-0 in the first quarter. (I) try to tell these guys,‘Yes, we won, but you’ve got to move on.’”

Having a short memory and maintaining focus throughout a week of practice becomes especially important when a high-level opponent is up next on the schedule. Mississippi State, who possesses a high level of talent despite being picked to finish 15th out of 16 SEC teams in the conference’s Preseason Media Poll.

First-year head coach Jeff Lebby added the most newcomers of any SEC program during this past offseason, most notably an experienced and dynamic signal-caller in senior Blake Shapen. The Louisiana native came into the 2024 campaign with 5,034 passing yards and 36 touchdowns across three years with Baylor under his belt and impressed in the Bulldogs’ season-opening win over Eastern Kentucky last week, throwing for 247 yards and three touchdowns while adding another score on the ground.

In that 56-7 thumping, Mississippi State recorded 450 yards of offense, allowed only one touchdown and scored their most points in a game since the 2022 season. The Bulldogs’ big victory came against an FCS team, so what it’s capable of when facing Power Four competition remains to be seen. One thing is for certain, though: in addition to a talented and hard-nosed defense, Lebby’s offense will bring a fast-paced game to Tempe this weekend.

Such a high-tempo offense will require the Sun Devils to remain focused throughout the entire night.

“They try to get you out of position with their tempo,” defensive coordinator Brian Ward said. “They may be the fastest team we see all year, and they do a great job of getting defenses misaligned and running by cornerbacks and guys getting lazy in their technique, and hopefully we can get aligned and play fast.”

There’s ample reason for ASU to be pumped for this upcoming Saturday. They face a talented squad with a chance to show significant improvement in year two under Dillingham, but something bigger will be at stake when the ball is kicked off at Mountain America Stadium around 7:30 p.m. — a spot in history. With a win, the Sun Devils would earn their first-ever victory over an SEC opponent in six tries.

If ASU does come away with the benchmark victory, though, it would signify to Brian Ward that it has indeed made strides in its rebuild, displaying an ability to handle success.

“You’ve got to learn how to win,” Brian Ward said. “As a program, that’s the next step. You just go through steps feeling like you’re off and running as a program, so hopefully this next week is going to be that next step, and hopefully our guys can handle the success. Our guys are tough guys, and especially the guys that came back from going through what we went through and the steps that we had to take last year.

“That’s part of the growing process, so this next step in the growing process is learning how to win.”