BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Rob Likens shed his backpack and set it on the carpet. In jeans, a light blue untucked dress shirt and a dark blue sport coat, he knelt down and started rummaging. He unzipped the front pocket of his Sun Bowl backpack and started tossing around all its contents.
“What are you looking for?” Someone asked.
“A cough drop of some sort,” he replied.
The Sun Devil offensive coordinator was off near a side wall, right in front of a massive portable putting green that had been flipped upside down. He kept the search alive -- unzipping, then zipping every pocket of his black backpack to no avail. There was gum available, but Likens would be afraid he’d be “chomping” too much during his interview.
Really, what he needed were liquids. So someone went off and fetched him a blue PowerAde Zero. He grabbed it and, before going into one postgame answer, twisted the cap and pulled it back. Likens gulped and gulped like he had been wandering the Sahara for a week.
He needed it. Games like Friday are draining. Problem is, ASU has gotten into a lot of them.
Maybe that’s why Likens was out of cough drops. After all, the Sun Devils don’t exactly make these wins easy. They grind out drives. They run the ball relentlessly. They don’t give up many big plays. And they always seem to be in a close game with five minutes left -- for better or worse.
“It doesn’t make my wife comfortable playing in these one-score games,” Edwards quipped
Neither does it for Edwards, or Likens, or defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales, or any of the Sun Devils’ coaching staff for that matter. The one-score, hold-your-breath-until-the-last-second contests aren’t ideal for one’s heart rate. It often, too, isn’t great for a team’s record, leaving the fate of a game into a few plays down the stretch time and time again -- just as was the case during the Devils’ 24-17 upset win over No. 15 Cal (4-1, 1-1 Pac-12).
As Friday’s contest began rearing itself toward another one-score game, Edwards and ASU’s coaching staff called the game like they were comfortable. Not only with the score but with whatever the game’s outcome became.
“We had nothing to lose, guys,” Edwards said. “You kidding me? You’re playing the 15-ranked team on the road. You can’t be afraid to win.”
In the fourth quarter, with Cal’s backup Devon Modster finishing the game after Chase Garbers left with an injury, Edwards turned to Gonzales and said, “Just do it. (Have them) get up there and just cover them ... tighter coverage, more man-to-man. If they beat us throwing the ball, that quarterback deserves to win.”
When ASU’s offense took the ball with 11 minutes remaining, down a field goal, the Sun Devils felt no pressure to chuck the ball in the air and transport themselves in field-goal range after a few plays.
“You have to make it sloppy,” Edwards said.
ASU isn’t going to win many pretty games. ‘Pretty’ being a bunch of five- or seven-play touchdown drives with a quarterback whizzing the ball around the field. It has to be methodical, Edwards insisted. Run the ball up the middle. Let the clock trickle down. Run the ball again. Pick up a first down. Do it all over again.
Now that will, as ASU has learned, result in a good amount of stalled drives. And Edwards was quick to admit the Sun Devils’ plan, in all its ugliness, is easier to pull off on the road because, he said without a smile, there aren’t as many fans on-site to shower you with boo’s.
Regardless, ASU stayed unfettered Friday. On the aforementioned drive, the Sun Devils marched 75 yards and used up more than six minutes of clock -- running the ball on 10 of their 15 plays. The end result was running back Eno Benjamin’s third touchdown of the night, a three-yard scamper that put ASU up four with less than five minutes remaining.
As much as the Sun Devils’ plan looks like gospel now, their coaches were still sweating as it unfolded.
Sweating because they were on the road. Because they were playing the No. 15 team in the country on the road. And because they are a squad so heavily reliant on underclassmen playing the No. 15 team in the country on the road.
The Sun Devil players are, indeed, young. ASU, as all its coaches continue to mention, have played 29 freshman or true freshmen this season. For them, it’s all-new. Everything is new.
Every situation, every big stadium, every ranked team they play breeds wide eyes. But rather than out of shock or surprise, they grow wide-eyed out of ignorance.
“They’re so naive,” Edwards said. “They don’t know if it’s a ranked team or not a ranked team. Or if they’re on the road they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re on the road? Really?’”
Added Likens: “I get mad at some of them pregame because they’re smiling, walking around laughing, and I’m like, ‘Guys, this is like a serious deal.’ They just don’t know any better.”
“But it’s not for me and Herm and us old guys,” Likens joked.
As he sat behind the podium, Benjamin had his shirt off with only a green towel around his shoulders. His right foot, which had on a black sock and was inside a black Adidas’ flip flop, could not stop bouncing. The junior tailback looked like a kid that had just swallowed a pound of sugar.
He was amped up. Last week he thought ASU attempted too many field goals in its loss to Colorado. When the Devils got near the red zone, he thought, he needed to punch it in. And he did, three times. That quarterback Jayden Daniels was also able to find success on the ground, rushing 12 times for 84 yards, made things all the better.
Because, for Benjamin, “That’s what it’s going to take.”
ASU is 4-1 and 1-1 in Pac-12 play heading into its bye week. It’s next seven games likely won’t be easy. There’s going to be methodical, what some fans would call ‘infuriating, drives. And, of course, there’s going to be plenty of down-to-the-wire games.
Grab your popcorn -- and cough drops.
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