In the second half on Saturday afternoon in Pullman, Arizona State shutout Washington State scored 18 points of their own and made two fourth down stops. Unfortunately for the Sun Devils (3-7, 2-5), the game was already over when the two teams trotted to the locker room at halftime. Washington State dominated the opening half, putting up all 28 of its points and suffocating the ASU offense before holding off a late comeback effort to secure their sixth win of the season. The 28-18 loss drops ASU to 3-7. With two games remaining, Shaun Aguano’s squad has been eliminated from bowl contention.
As he’s done since taking over as interim head coach, Aguano was quick to take the lion’s share of the blame for the loss. He did, however, take a moment to praise his team’s heart.
“Their legacy is a tough one. They don’t quit,” he said sincerely. “The cards have been stacked against them, and we’re playing on E right now in terms of personnel. But they don’t quit, and they will play hard.”
In his three previous games, Trenton Bourguet commandeered an offense that easily moved the ball, putting up 35+ points against Washington, Colorado, and UCLA. Washington State ensured that the new ASU starting QB would not have the same success on Saturday. The Cougars’ defensive front made Bourguet’s job difficult from the jump, creating pressure and using stunts to keep the Sun Devils off guard. With ASU trailing 7-0, a free blitzer came from the blind side and rocked Bourguet, who lost the ball in the process. ASU recovered on its own 1, but the play was symbolic of what was to come throughout the rest of the disastrous half.
“We didn’t execute up front, and I’ll take the blame for that,” Aguano said bluntly. “We didn’t do our jobs early, and our defense had to be on the field way too much. We put ourselves in situations that we shouldn’t be in.”
Bourguet didn’t suffer for long, as Shaun Aguano went with Emory Jones late in the first half. It seemed at the time that Bouruget was being benched, but it was later reported that he was dealing with a leg injury that ultimately ended his afternoon.
Jones fared better than Bourguet under center overall, but only marginally. He couldn’t make anything happen during his first few drives. By the time he found Jalin Conyers on a fourth-down slant route that Conyers took all the way to the end zone to get ASU on the board, it was already too late. The QB split will lean in favor of Jones because of volume and the late comeback effort, but Bourguet’s smaller sample size came early when the ASU offensive line may as well have been on rollerblades against a tenacious Cougar pass rush. Bourguet finished 3-10 for just 26 yards. Jones’ final line comes out to 15-23 for 186 yards. All 186 came in the second half.
Aguano said that Bourguet wasn’t right after the second series. He tried to gut it out but couldn’t. Aguano emphasized that player safety is his top priority and was the reason he made the switch.
“We’re comfortable with whoever is at quarterback at any time,” running back Xazavian Valladay said, reiterating a point he and his teammates have repeated since the onset of the quarterback controversy in early October. “We prepared for this; I don’t feel like they showed us anything different. It came down to executing. Penalties, false starts. It comes down to locking in and knowing your assignment.”
Although it wasn’t often pretty in this game, Valladay came away with another impressive stat line in the loss. He rushed for 134 yards on 21 attempts and scored a touchdown. He has found the end zone in six consecutive games. Valladay didn’t discuss his personal success following yet another road loss.
“The first half wasn’t our brand of football at all. I felt like we came out with no energy,” he said. “We have to ask more of our teammates to just put their best foot forward.”
When asked what changed between the anemic first half and a productive second half, Valladay said the biggest difference was “just sticking together.”
“We didn’t play a good first half. It came back and bit us.”
Valladay was able to take advantage of improved offensive line play in the second half. An already depleted front five for ASU lost center and vocal leader Ben Scott early in the game but was able to make adjustments down the stretch that contributed to the late scoring push. Ben Bray replaced Scott at center, and improved pass protection from the tackles allowed Jones breathing room.
“We tried to simplify things a little bit. Especially when we were dropping back and passing,” Aguano explained. “And then I thought they did a good job continuing with that front.”
With bowl eligibility off the table for the first time in a full season since 2016, all that’s left for ASU to play for is its pride. The Sun Devils come home for the final time in 2022 against Oregon State next weekend before heading down to Tucson for the territorial cup at Arizona.
The high character of the team is evident even without the constant reminders from Aguano. This team always plays through the final whistle. The players are always accountable even in the toughest of circumstances, something that wasn’t always the case under Herm Edwards. If nothing else, fans can be proud of the group that ASU puts on the field every week for those reasons.
“I just had a good talk with my coaches; we’re going to make sure we take care of these guys,” Aguano said. “These guys are going to finish. They’ll come back tomorrow and get ready for the next two weeks. I’m going to have a great time with these guys the next two weeks, and then we’ll see what happens. I told them I was proud of them, and I get prouder every week.
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