Wow—how about them Sun Devils! As I mentioned last week, Arizona State was picked by the Big-12 media poll to come in dead last in the conference. And yet, with the two teams above them—BYU and Colorado—both losing this past weekend Arizona State finds themselves in a four way tie at the top of the Big-12 with only one game left against their struggling in-state rival Arizona. I’m not going to go into the conference tie-breaking rules because it’s really complicated and would be so long you wouldn’t want to read it. Needless to say with all four teams having one conference game each left if two win and two lose all those complications won’t matter. We’ll have to wait and see what happens this coming weekend.
After forcing BYU to turn the ball back over on downs to start the game, the Sun Devils took a 7-0 lead 10 plays and 54 yards later on a 3 yard run by their Senior RB Cam Skattebo who rushed 28 times for 147 yards of the team’s 166 total yards on the ground and back-to-back-to-back TD’s to go up 21-3 by the end of the second quarter. BYU would score back-to-back-to-back TD’s of their own in the 2nd half. But a missed two-point conversion and another Arizona State TD on a 61 yard Sam Leavitt pass to Xavier Guillory would keep the Cougars at bay in this 28-23 victory for the Sun Devils at home to keep them in the thick of the race to play in the Big-12 Conference Championship.,
For BYU, Junior QB Jake Retzlaff connected multiple times to five different receivers for a total of 297 yards, 1 TD to Freshman WR JoJo Phillips, and 2 picks while also rushing six times for another 19 yards. Including Retzlaff, three other players ran the ball 23 times for 94 yards with their Junior WR Keelan Marion picking up both of their rushing TD’s on the ground. For Arizona State, Freshman QB Sam Leavitt was 16-of-25 for 247 yards with Sophomore Jordan Tyson hauling in nine of those for 125 yards, the 1 TD to Guillory and 1 interception while also rushing 8 times for 8 yards.
BYU led in first downs, 26-to-22; passing yards, 297-to-247; had fewer penalties and were successful on third down 70% of the time compared to just over 50% for the Sun Devils. Arizona State had more rushing yards, more total yards, and ten more minutes time-of-possession.
In the AP’s Takeaway for ESPN and regarding bowl implications they had this to say; “The Sun Devils added to their unexpected rise with the win over the Cougars. Skattebo, Leavitt and receiver Jordyn Tyson continued their stellar seasons while the defense played extremely well for a second straight week. Arizona State was 6-0 at home this season [and] likely will jump ahead of BYU in the rankings, but the question is by how much. The Sun Devils are probably still a long shot to make the CFP but there’s definitely hope.”