“I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I don’t know if I’ll ever have a season that exceeds the expectations like this year,” Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said.
Dillingham’s postgame notions are the byproduct of media apprehensions, magnified in the Big 12 media football media preseason poll projecting them to finish last in the Big 12 conference heading into the 2024 season. Following a 3-9 campaign in 2023, few people across the country were willing to be bullish on the Sun Devils in July. Fast forward five months later, and a team of players inspired by doubt and skepticism continued to defy the confines of probability and projections, proving themselves to be the deciders of their destiny.
The top 25 showdown in a sold-out affair with 55,400 in the stands lived up to its billing in a thrilling 28-23 victory for ASU (9-2, 6-2 Big 12) over BYU (9-2, 6-2). Saturday marked senior day in Tempe for a heap of players participating in the action for a final time at Mountain America Stadium. Senior running back and four-time Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week Cam Skattebo stamped his sanguine legacy in Sun Devil football history, scoring three first-half touchdowns en route to 159 all-purpose yards of total offense on Saturday.
With the victory, ASU controls its own destiny, as a win next week on the road against Arizona would have the Sun Devils earn its place in the Big 12 Championship game but also granting itself as the de facto Big 12 regular season champions with the No. 1 seed in any tiebreaker scenario.
“It's amazing just activating the valley,” Sophomore Jordyn Tyson said. “That was the craziest thing I’ve been a part of. Their crowd getting loud, our crowd getting loud, [Yelling] BYU and ASU, like that was amazing to be a part of.”
“Repeat the process because nobody cares what you did yesterday, and nobody’s going to care if we turn out to be a 9-3 football team,” Dillingham said. “We’ll be a flash in the pan. We want to continue to do something special. You got to do it every single day, and you’ve got to be able to repeat it.”
With their season on the line, the Sun Devils began the game ignited. Skattebo’s three scores saw them ahead 21-3 at the halftime interval. Redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt completed 6-11 first-half passes, five of those ending up in Tyson’s hands for 81 of his 125 yards. Leavitt's 96 passing yards combined with Skattebo’s 96 rushing yards helped generate over 200 yards of first-half offense.
A play that summarized the first half was presented when Dillingham and special teams coordinator Charlie Ragle elected to attempt a ‘low-risk onside kick,’ which transformed into an ASU recovery. The onside kick directly followed and led to another touchdown, putting the host ahead by three touchdowns midway through the second quarter.
“When we squibbed it the way they angled their dude, we said, let's try to hit him on the way to the squib,” Dillingham said. “We have a chance to recover it, but if we don’t hit him, they recover the ball around the 30-yard line.”
However, BYU showed in the second half why they were undefeated in the 2024 season heading into last week. Junior quarterback Jake Retzlaff dominated, throwing 208 of his 297 passing yards in the back half of Saturday’s contest. The Cougars picked up their ground game as well, earning 69 positive yards and two touchdowns. The combination of running back LJ Martin and junior wide receiver Keelan Martin became worrisome for Sun Devil fans.
When Marlon scored his second touchdown of the game with 8:44 left in the fourth quarter, a feeling of doubt crept into the minds of fans across the stadium, yet, according to Dillingham, on the field, those doubts never found their way into the hearts of the players.
“Guys, we’re still winning,” Dillingham said he told the team during BYU’s comeback. “We’ll make one play; just make one play the rest of the game. So many times, it’s just one play, and guess what? We got it; we got the play to win the football game.
“That’s just so special, we have a bunch of guys that have such confidence, like ‘Oh the games close glad I'm on this sideline, I wouldn’t wanna be on the other sideline.’ Because that’s what we do, we win close games, and we like drama, so it's perfect. It's right up our wheelhouse.”
Defensive back junior Javan Robinson capitalized during the white-knuckle moment; with 1:15 to play in the fourth quarter, Retzlaff was in a hurry to move the chains facing second-and-10 from the ASU 39-yard line, reading his eyes without a doubt in his mind Robinson pounced on the route intercepting the pass leading to the Sun Devils impromptu win.
Running the clock down, Leavitt and the offense had one play remaining with seven seconds on the clock, the signal caller dropped back and launched the ball out of bounds, and with the clock hitting zero, players assumed the game was over running onto the field to celebrate with their teammates. Thousands of eager Sun Devil fans waiting for this euphoric moment stormed the field by the thousands yelling ‘ASU!’ to their vocal cords capacity.
Nonetheless, the game wasn’t quite done yet.
Mania was unleashed inside the stadium, but Leavitt's away was under official review to see when the play ended. After concluding that one second was to be played in the contest, a frenzy was slowly tamed, and the final play of the game could be played as BYU attempted a Hail Mary that Retzlaff left seven yards short of the goal line despite Roberts hauling in the pass.
“It doesn’t matter whatever happened at the end, it happened and you know what? We got to rush the field twice,” Dillingham laughed. “How about that? We rushed the field three times this year, that’s pretty cool. How many people get the opportunity to do that? Come to Arizona State because there’s going to be a lot more of that coming forward.”
Before Saturday’s game, Arizona State finalized three-year contract extensions for both its offensive and defensive coordinators, Marcus Arroyo and Brain Ward. Returning a team from figurative wreckage and locking them down in Tempe shows signs of a team ready to turn their Cinderella story into happily ever after.
“It shows the direction of the program; there’s going to be consistency here. If you look at those guys out there, I wore a ‘Sun Angel Collective’ shirt today. If this is something we want to continue to do, then pay the man his money,” Dillingham said, mocking Mike McDermott's character in the 1998 movie Rounders. “Our team is underpaid, and we’re doing more with guys who just got it out of the mud. But eventually, you should get what you deserve, and our guys deserve more.”
Saturday’s contest was seemingly a once-in-a-blue-moon moment for ASU, 2004 was the last time the program went undefeated at Frank Kush Field, and in 2014, a 55-31 victory over Notre Dame was the latest win the program has under its belt with conference championship implications. In 2024, the Sun Devils repeated both feats once again. For Dillingham, he desires more than a singular season of success once in a decade rather than turning these moments into consistency.
“How expensive were these tickets?” Dillingham asked. “Like 300 bucks? If you bought a season ticket to begin the year you’d probably would have to spend another 150, there’s going to be a lot more games that tickets get to that price. So, if you want to be a part of them, you better buy season tickets.
“Let’s make this every single week of next year because why would you not want to be in that environment? That was one of the most fun places to be in college football. Why would you not want to do that every Saturday? “
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