After rushing just 36 times for 114 yards total in 2021 Washington State Junior RB Nakia Watson is having a breakout season in 2022. Having already rushed 100 times for over 600 yards this year Watson had a career night against the Sun Devils in their 28-18 win at home in Pullman, carrying the rock 20 times for 116 yards and 3 TD’s–averaging almost six yards per carry. Cougar QB Cameron Ward connected on 22-of-37 for 219 yards and 1 TD to Freshman WR Leyton Smithson. For Arizona State Junior QB Emory Jones, back from an injury, connected on 65% of his passes for 186 yards and 2 TD’s, one to Sophomore WR Elijah Badger and the other to TE Jaylin Conyers. On the ground Senior RB Xazavian Valladay carried the load, as usual, rushing 21 times for 134 yards and 1 TD and should surpass 1,000 yards on the season this next Saturday for the third time in his college career.
In an odd game where Washington State only scored in the 1st and 2nd Qtr and the Wildcats in the 3rd and 4th, Arizona State was held to five punts and an interception before the break and then held their opponents to four punts and a turnover on downs in the 2nd half. The Cougars were up 13-0 at the end of the 1st Qtr and 28-0 at the half. With less than a minute left in the 3rd Qtr Arizona State finally got into the end zone on a 47 yard pass from Emory Jones to Jalin Conyers but failed a two point conversion to trail 28-6 going into a 4th Qtr where they got into the end zone two more times to make it a 10 point game at 28-18 as both 2-point conversions failed.
Both defenses did a pretty good job of disrupting their opponent’s offense recording right at 70 tackles each with 3 sacks and 8 tackles for loss by Arizona State against 4 sacks and 6 tackles for loss by the Cougars. They both had 18 1st downs and were within 23 yards of each other in Total Yards of Offense. Washington State came into the game ranked 1st in the conference in Scoring Defense with fewest point allowed and in the end it was their defense that won it, but it wasn’t pretty. As Head Coach Dickert said afterwards; “That’s not ideally how we wanted to win that game. We need to be more mature and handle leads. At the end of the day we won it. We won it ugly.”
The AP Take Away for ESPN noted that; “A second consecutive victory allowed the Cougars to become bowl-eligible [while] Arizona State’s post-season hopes were extinguished.” Arizona State goes back home to host a very tough Oregon State team while the Cougars will head in the same direction as they’ll be going up against their former starter Jayden de-Laura who left for Arizona via the transfer porter after throwing for 2,800 yards and 23 TD’s for Washington State in 2021.