After the strangest year of college football, perhaps in the history of the sport, two hungry teams will face off in Tucson in the 94th edition of the Territorial Cup on Friday at 5 p.m. MST.
While Arizona (0-4) and Arizona State (0-2) have played a combined six games this season, and the game will be played in a completely empty Arizona Stadium, ASU head coach Herm Edwards still thinks the matchup has tremendous meaning.
“We’re trying to give a little (piece) of what this game really means to our fan base,” Edwards stated. “Where it stands in college football. One of the longest rivalries in college football, so all those things matter. And like anybody else, when you haven’t won a game, you want to win a game. You don’t want to keep going through this. The drudgery of almost winning. They want to win one, and we want to win one.”
The Sun Devils come into the Territorial Cup game riding a disappointing wave. ASU started the 2020 season with high expectations, only to have three games canceled due to COVID-19, and both games played being heartbreaking losses to the Los Angeles schools, USC and UCLA.
Edwards attributed the losses to not being able to finish games on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.
“We had opportunities in both those games,” Edwards said. “We had an opportunity to make some stops on fourth down and did not. And the SC game, we also had the opportunity offensively to go down at the end. We had a chance to get into field goal range and maybe kick a field goal and win. When you look at (the UCLA game), the defense had the lead at the end … and we couldn’t find a way to get off the field. And that being said, the offense had the ball at the end … and we had two timeouts in our pocket to go down the field and make a score and get it tied up. That didn’t happen for us.”
Edwards also felt ASU’s performance against UCLA on Saturday was partly due to his team not playing for a month. He said it took time for the Sun Devils to get back into a football game flow.
“I thought we were slow early,” Edwards explained. “I thought our whole team was kind of slow trying to figure out the pace of the game. First-quarter was an even quarter, 0-0. Their second quarter all season, UCLA has been their biggest scoring quarter, and they got a lead on us. Quarterback made some plays with his feet. Offensively, we struggled a little bit, just connecting and trying to hit some passes. And I thought the second half we kind of got a flow going. … It was just a matter of feeling the game speed again. We had missed that. But for the most part, throughout the second half, we got our wind.”
ASU had three ineligible man downfield penalties in the game Saturday. One of those penalties negated an Andre Johnson 39-yard touchdown reception. Edwards thought “a couple of them were tight” but explained the reason they happened was because the offensive linemen penalized were confused which play they were supposed to be running.
Edwards did have some positives to take away from the UCLA game. He praised redshirt-junior defensive end Tyler Johnson, who had three sacks on Saturday.
“I think he’s improved tremendously,” Edwards remarked. “He is one of the bright spots on defense right now for us as far as rushing the quarterback. He made a couple of plays in the UCLA game, just one-on-one tackles of that quarterback. Very difficult to do. He’s always been a guy to make a play or two, but he had a pretty consistent game, I felt. One of his most consistent games, in my opinion, since he’s been here.”
Edwards was asked about the play of his offense and the performance of his quarterback, Jayden Daniels. He said Daniels has to remember he is working with mostly young receivers and explained that UCLA was only the second time his team has been able to take the field with Zak Hill as offensive coordinator, so it will take more game action for his team to have the system down.
The Arizona game will be another chance for the team to gain experience in the new offense. But Edwards knows it will not be easy against a Wildcat team he thinks is much better than its 0-4 record and 11-straight losses dating back to 2019.
“They lost to SC at home by four,” Edwards explained. “… They played Colorado, and they were one score down in the third quarter and threw a costly interception and had the ball right back down there again and on fourth down, Colorado made a play and didn’t allow them to score, so they played very well, at home against two teams that obviously are undefeated. So we anticipate that along with it being a rivalry game.”
Something interesting to watch in the game Friday is who will be the Sun Devils’ starting kicker. After he missed a 45-yard field goal in the first quarter of the UCLA game, ASU kicker Cristian Zendejas was benched in favor of redshirt-freshman Jack Luckhurst. Luckhurst made his only field goal attempt Saturday, a 49-yarder that was the longest field goal for ASU since the 2018 Las Vegas Bowl.
Edwards said this week’s practices would decide who the starting kicker will be on Friday.
“We have two kickers,” Edwards stated. “We’ll just play it by ear. Practice will have a lot to do with it. Both of them have done a good job for the most part. We’ll determine when the game is being played who we feel comfortable (with) at that point if we have to kick a field goal.”
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