15Sep/0812:34 PM

More reaction to ASU loss to UNLV

By Vince Marotta

Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP

We all know what happened on Saturday night at Sun Devil Stadium. An unheralded, and disrepected UNLV football team came to Tempe and just beat #13 Arizona State. There was nothing fluky about it. There were no strange plays, or a host of turnovers from ASU making the Rebels’ job that much easier. UNLV just lined up and won the football game. They were the better team on Saturday night.

Now, with their season in flux, Dennis Erickson’s team starts preparation for #5 Georgia on Saturday night in a nationally televised affair. The hype for this game has been ongoing, since basically the end of last year’s bowl games. People pointed to this matchup as a key game in determining the next BCS National Champion. For Georgia, it still may be a big step in their quest for the championship. For ASU, this game has deteriorated into a game which will determine if they’re even a good football team. Wins against NAU and perennial Pac-10 doormat Stanford don’t really prove that. A win against Georgia could salvage the season for the Sun Devils, although that seems unlikely at this point.

Defensively, Arizona State ranks tied for 90th in the country with only 3 forced turnovers. In two their games, the NAU contest and on Saturday night against UNLV, the Sun Devils have failed to produce one turnover. They are tied for 74th in the country with only 4 sacks on defense. All four of those sacks have been by defensive end Dexter Davis, who is the only Sun Devil on defense to show any play-making ability through the first one-fourth of the Sun Devils’ season. Saturday, the defense didn’t sack Rebel quarterbacks Omar Clayton and Mike Clausen, who attempted a combined 36 passes in the game. They allowed UNLV to reel off two scoring drives covering 28 plays, 150 yards and over 11 minutes in time of possession.

The offense was about as conservative as you can get against UNLV. Arizona State ran only 59 plays on offense Saturday night, 61% of them were running plays. Arizona State ran only 23 plays after halftime, 16 of those were runs. Seven were passes. One of the seven passes was a 49 yard touchdown pass from Rudy Carpenter to Kyle Williams. Seventy percent of the plays in the 2nd half of the ballgame were runs, when Keegan Herring, the team’s starting tailback was out with an injury. The Sun Devils rank 91st in the country, averaging 117.33 yards per game on the ground, and are 9th in the country in passing offense. ASU is converting only 38% of their third downs on the season. The Sun Devils, who were third in the country in time of possession in 2007 are now 75th.

ASU head coach Dennis Erickson was quoted on Sunday, saying “we probably should have thrown a little more.”

In Las Vegas, this win is being trumped by the Las Vegas Review Journal as the third biggest win in the history of the UNLV football program. Writer Mark Anderson ranks only 1981’s victory over 8th ranked BYU and a 23-5 win over #14 Wisconsin in 2003 as bigger wins. Mike Sanford, who’s career record at UNLV was 7-30 heading into the contest, called it the biggest win of his life.

This very well could have been a case of Arizona State collectively looking forward to Saturday’s matchup with Georgia. Or maybe it’s a case of the Sun Devils not being worthy of their ranking.

Neither option is very good for ASU.