Written by Garin Turner
As been the case in all four of their losses, the Arizona State Sun Devils (3-4, 1-3 PAC-12) were a couple of drives short of coming away with a victory as they dropped a tough one to the Stanford Cardinals (5-2, 3-1 PAC-12) 20-13. “I despise, and I hate losing so don’t think that I’m going out there on purpose trying to lose the game, so I hate losing more than anything,” senior Sun Devil quarterback Manny Wilkins said.
There wasn’t a lot of scoring in the first half, as the Sun Devils held a 3-0 lead at the end of the first quarter. Stanford responded with two field goals to take a halftime lead of 6-3. The first touchdown of the game came with 7:55 left in the third quarter when K.J. Costello connected with JJ Arcega-Whiteside for a 28-yard score to bring the score to 13-6.
The very next time Stanford got the ball, they went 80 yards capping it off with a one-yard touchdown run by Cameron Scarlett to bring the score to 20-7. The Sun Devils stepped it up on defense, not allowing any more points. Despite turning the ball over three times the Sun Devils were never out of the game.“ We were down by three, we got it tied up and then all of the sudden we had a series of events take place and we didn’t recover (quickly) enough. It became a series of bad plays. On offense, it was the turnovers and obviously the pass interferences. We can’t do that,” Arizona head coach Herm Edwards said.
Arizona State scored its lone touchdown with 7:50 left in the game when Manny Wilkins scored on a 10-yard run to bring the score to 20-13. The Sun Devils would have the ball once more but only accumulated 14 yards.
Wilkins went 26/43 for 353 yards for the Sun Devils, he also had the touchdown run and finished with 41 yards on 11 carries. The Sun Devils didn’t get much from their running game. Wilkins was the leading rusher for the team. N’Keal Harry had eight receptions for 91 yards for the Sun Devils to lead their receiving corps.
Arizona State had more total offense than Stanford 437-358. Penalties where a problem however with seven for 86 yards and they just couldn’t sustain many drives They had the ball for 21:43 while Stanford had the ball 38:17. “The first half they had it for about 20 minutes, we had it for about 10. That’s who they are though, they play time of possession,” Edwards said.
Photo Credit: Nicholas Windsor / The SkyBoat
