After the Week-8 total butt kicking by Oregon on his own home turf head coach Kyle Whittingham said; “When you get beat like that, you don’t want to berate your team and browbeat them. What happened out there was enough.” Well, the Utes spent no time whatsoever mourning their loss or licking their wounds and chose to instead follow the lead of their starting QB Bryson Barnes who said; “You don’t want to let a team beat you twice. We had to regain our energy and get over that loss, no matter how bad it was.” And get over it they did in a 55-3 total blowout win against Arizona State.
Barnes connected on 19-of-28 for 161 yards and a career high 4 TD’s and no interceptions with two of those going to Junior WR DeVaughn Vele, and one each to Sophomore TE Landen King and WR Munir McClain. On the ground, Utah was unstoppable while rushing 49 times for 352 yards and 3 TD’s. Sophomore RB Ja’Quinden Jackson led the way with 13 carries for 111 yards and 1 TD while Nate Johnson, Jaylon Glover, and Charlie Vincent combined for another 176 yards and two scores. I guess you could say that Arizona State had an even handed approach towards their offense—passing for 40 yards and rushing for 43 as the Utah defense seemed as motivated as their offense. The only Sun Devil who put points up on the board in this one was Senior Place Kicker Dario Longhetto who kicked a 35 yard field goal with about three minutes left in the 1st Qtr and Utah leading 14-3. By the half it was 24-3 and 34-3 at the end of three before pouring on another 21 points in the 4th Qtr.
I haven’t worked out the math but it seems that with two conference losses Utah will need to win their last three games, one of which is against unbeaten Washington on the road this coming Saturday, while also hoping that both the Huskies and Ducks lose to someone else along the way so that they hold the tie breaker for what would be the second spot in the conference championship game if that happens. They were in a similar situation last year in that they needed four things to happen the last week in order to make it in. Those things did happen and Utah capped it off by winning their 2nd PAC-12 Conference Championship in a row. I don’t think that’s likely to happen this year but they are not technically out of it yet. Arizona State heads to the Rose Bowl to take on a UCLA team that will try to bounce back from a disappointing loss to Arizona.