Inconsistency can be a damning sign of a young team. Arizona State has been a prime example this season.

A day after arguably their best game of the year, a 5-1 dismantling of USC, the Sun Devils suffered their heaviest home defeat of the campaign in an error-filled 10-1 loss to the Trojans at Phoenix Municipal Stadium on Saturday night.

“It’s a concentration thing,” Smith said of his team’s string of miscues in the second game of its series with USC.

Eli Lingos entered Saturday night leading the Sun Devils in almost every major pitching category but got shelled for eight runs (five earned) in a season-short 4 ⅓ innings start. Behind him, ASU’s defense was in shambles again, committing three errors and a series of other fielding blunders to gift wrap USC three unearned runs in the fourth inning that pushed the game out of reach. Six of USC's ten total runs in the game were unearned.

“We didn’t help him (Lingos) defensively,” Smith said. “[If] we just play catch and throw tonight, that’s a different baseball game. He’s probably settling in there instead of down six runs (through four innings).”

Meanwhile, the Sun Devils explosive offense never ignited. USC starter Solomon Bates cruised through 7 ⅔ innings of one-run ball, striking out seven batters while allowing just three hits. Bates’ mix of a low-90s fastball and mid-70s breaking pitch kept ASU’s hitters off-balance throughout.

“That kid (Bates) was on,” Smith said. “He was really good tonight. He was beating us with one pitch, beating some pretty good hitters with one pitch. He was doing something special.”

For the youthful Sun Devils, this has been a season-long theme: Showing promise one night and looking out-of-depth the next. After they committed four errors and coughed up a late lead in Tuesday’s loss to Cal State Fullerton, Smith tried to reconcile his team’s erratic play.

“If you watched our Sunday game (a 7-0 win over Washington State), those same guys throwing baseballs all over the diamond made some of the best plays you’ll see all year in college baseball,” he said. “It’s the randomness.”

Less than a week later, the ASU skipper was forced to sit through a similar line of questioning on Saturday.

“Your rational brain keeps bringing you back to: you have a lot of guys that have never played college baseball before and some guys playing positions they’ve never played,” Smith explained. “This is a fast-paced conference, it’s a good conference, it’s one of the best conferences in the country. It’s sometimes tough to learn on the fly.”

The biggest issue still needing to be addressed is ASU’s unreliable defense. The Sun Devils entered play this weekend ranked 223rd in the country in fielding percentage. Over 19 percent of their opponents’ runs this season have been unearned (30 of 156).

It has been the mistakes on basic plays -- like on Saturday, when freshman Drew Swift missed a grounder in the hole in the sixth or Spencer Torkelson’s dropped cut-off throw in the second -- that have frustrated Smith the most.

“That consistency is not going to come until we do a better job of just catching and throwing the baseball,” Smith said, identifying the simple issues that are still tormenting his team.

Problem is, there is no easy fix to the Sun Devils problems; no obvious method to get his young roster to mature faster. Instead, Smith talked earlier in the week about his team’s need to keep “failing forward” as they try to gain experience.

Saturday’s blowout loss was not a sample of development.

“(There’s a) fine line between using youth as an excuse,” Smith said. “My rational brain says these guys are going to take a little bit of time.”

But even ASU’s more experienced players have erred with regularity this year. Sophomore Carter Aldrete’s six errors match a team-high (freshmen Swift and Gage Workman also have committed a half-dozen errors). Sophomore Hunter Bishop misplayed a couple of fly balls on Saturday while battling a hazy evening sky and is hitting just .256 on the season. ASU’s leading hitter, junior Gage Canning, struck out in each of his first three trips to the plate on Saturday, failing to carry the offensive load.

Saturday was an opportunity for ASU to take a small step forward. It represented a chance to claim a second-consecutive conference home series with its best and most experienced pitcher on the mound.

Now ASU will be forced into a rubber match on Sunday afternoon, it’s pitching staff already lean thanks to a five-game week and freshman starter Boyd Vander Kooi’s unavailability due to an arm injury.

Smith can hope his team will navigate around the mental landmines that have consistently imploded on the Sun Devils this spring. They just haven't done enough to instill that level of confidence yet.

“We just have to start doing those types of things,” Smith said of the cleaning up the defensive miscues, “and understand how important those little things are in the overall [picture].”