Even with home field advantage and the temperature on their side—104 degrees—the Sun Devils couldn’t get it done against the Cowboys as Oklahoma State put it away for good on a 16 yard pass from Freshman backup QB Garret Rangel to Senior WR Brennan Presley to put the game out of reach with just under three minutes left in the game and Arizona State now down by two possessions—27-15. One has to wonder if there might have been another way as the Cowboys got that opportunity after the Sun Devils decided to go for it on 4th and 2 on their own 33 yard line with over six minutes left to play in a game in which they were only down by five points. The Oklahoma State defense held and got the ball back on a short field and smartly took their nice sweet time finally getting it into the end zone for what turned out to be the final score.
The Sun Devil starting QB, Freshman Jaden Rashada, was just 16-of-29 in this one for 167 yards, 1 TD, and one pick with almost half of those yards and the one score being collected by Junior WR Elijah Badger and most of the rest by Junior WR Xavier Guillory and Junior TE Jalin Conyers. In a rush-by-committee approach Junior RB Cameron Skattebo collected just over half of their 110 yards on the ground as well as the their lone rushing TD with Junior RB’s Decarlos Brooks and Elijah Badger—doing some double duty—picking up over 20 yards each as well. For the Cowboys, their starting QB Senior Alan Bowman connected on close to 70% of his passes fore 113 yards with backups Garret Rangel and Sophomore Gunnar Grundy picking up the other 78 yards while connecting collectively on 11-of-16. On the ground Oklahoma State had three RB’s rush seven or more times each for a combined 126 yards with Sophomore RB Ollie Gordon II getting their only rushing TD early in the 2nd Qtr to tie the score at the time at seven a piece.
It was a pretty close game on paper with the Cowboys recording just one more 1st down than Arizona State, 16-15; just three more yards rushing, 113-110; a little more than 20 yards passing, 191-167; and a couple of minutes of extra possession. It’s the second week in a row that the Sun Devils have been held to less than 300 yards of total offense and head coach Kenny Dillingham seemed to blame most of it on their inability to convert manageable third and fourth down opportunities successfully. But with starting right tackle Emmit Boyle going down on Arizona State’s second drive, as the AP noted in their recap, along with the fact that they were already missing their starting left guard Isaia Glass, I return to my initial reaction regarding the coach’s decision to go for it on 4th and 2 on their own 33 yard line in a game in which they were only down by five points with over six minutes left to play—sorry—bad idea.