Category: Arizona State Sun Devils

Pac-12 bubble watch: Oregon hurts Arizona State’s NCAA tourney hopes

Oregon beating ASU means the Sun Devils are several spots outside the NCAA Tournament. UO and ASU are both in trouble.

The Pac-12 Conference might get only three teams in the NCAA tournament once again. A few weeks ago, it looked like four or maybe even five teams were going to get in.

One possibility was Arizona State, which started the season strong before plummeting quickly. The Sun Devils are now 16-8 overall but just 7-6 in the Pac-12, including losses to Washington and Washington State.

The Sun Devils’ latest loss, a 75-70 defeat to Oregon in Tempe on Saturday, is a significant blow to their NCAA at-large hopes.

If anything, this is a boost to Oregon’s resume, and it could put the Ducks as an at-large team instead of Arizona State (h/t Zachary Neel of Ducks Wire).

“After a tough loss to the Arizona Wildcats on Thursday night, the Ducks were able to pull out a scrappy, ugly, and hard-fought 75-70 victory over the Arizona State Sun Devils,” Neel wrote. “It certainly wasn’t pretty, but it was good enough to keep Oregon’s hopes of getting an at-large bid in the NCAA March Madness Tournament alive and well.”

Dana Altman’s team has been up and down all season, but the Ducks have wins over Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, all of which help their case when fighting for a spot in the Big Dance.

The Sun Devils have now dropped five of their last six games, and they will likely need at least one win against Arizona or UCLA in the final stretch of the regular season to boost their resume.

Arizona State faces Stanford, Cal, and Colorado over the next couple of weeks, and a loss to one of those lower-tier Pac-12 teams might be the final nail in the coffin for Arizona State this season, especially if it can’t beat UCLA or Arizona.

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Mapping out USC’s path to the NCAA Tournament: must-win games, overall targets, and more

Four-star QB Jaden Rashada commits to Arizona State

Kenny Dillingham has his QB1 for the future. Arizona State’s recruiting has skyrocketed under its young coach, who is obviously connecting with players.

On Wednesday, Arizona State and first-year head coach Kenny Dillingham earned a commitment from four-star quarterback Jaden Rashada, a former Florida Gator commitment.

Rashada, the No. 44 overall player and sixth-ranked quarterback in the Class of 2023, announced his commitment to Arizona State during national signing day on Wednesday.

Rashada recently received a release from his letter of intent with the Florida Gators and re-opened his recruitment. Arizona State, TCU and California were potential suitors.

Rashada threw for 5,687 yards and tossed 67 touchdowns during his high school career. He was a finalist at the Elite 11 camp and played in the Under Armour All-America Game.

Including transfers — the Sun Devils could set a record in terms of volume alone this period — the ASU class ranked 46th. It included 46 total players: 20 high school and junior college commits plus 26 transfers.

Rashada’s commitment alone vaults ASU to 25th nationally in the pre-signing day rankings.

Rashada choosing Arizona State shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise. His father, Harlen Rashada, played defensive back for the Sun Devils in the mid-1990s.

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Kenny Dillingham’s first year at Arizona State will be difficult, but 2023 slate has lots of home games

The good news for ASU: 8 home games. The bad news: Home games include USC, Oklahoma State, and Oregon. Also: Utah and Washington on the road.

The Pac-12 Conference has seen a lot of changes this offseason. The transfer portal has been busy, and the coaching staff has changed at a couple of programs.

One of them is Arizona State, which finally moved on from Herm Edwards and hired former Oregon assistant Kenny Dillingham.

When the Pac-12 schedule was released for 2023, the Sun Devils must not have felt good about the quality of opponents on their slate, even though ASU has eight home games.

Jon Wilner of The Mercury News detailed some nuggets of Arizona State’s schedule, and it’s going to be a tough year in the desert as Dillingham gets started:

“The first year of Kenny Dillingham’s tenure features eight home games, most of them early in the season,” Wilner wrote. “The Sun Devils open league play against USC, and the finish is rugged with Utah and UCLA on the road (in back-to-back fashion) and Oregon and Arizona at home. If ASU plans to become bowl-eligible, it needs to have five wins locked up when November arrives.”

The Sun Devils did land Notre Dame QB Drew Pyne, so that’s a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, playing USC to begin and then Utah and UCLA on the road is a brutal slate for them in the Pac-12.

At least the Herm Edwards era is over.

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USC hammers Arizona State, makes gains in NCAA Tournament bubble chase and Pac-12 standings

USC badly needed at least a split on its Arizona road trip. It got it, and it did so in surprisingly easy fashion in Tempe. This is a big step forward for the Trojans.

There’s a lot to unpack about USC’s 77-69 win over Arizona State on Saturday night. Almost all of it is good. We’re definitely going to focus on Vince Iwuchukwu’s dynamic night and how much that could change this team’s outlook for the rest of the season. We’re going to look at the balanced contributions from several players on the roster. We’re going to deal with the last four and a half minutes of the game, in which USC completely dozed off and gave Andy Enfield a talking point for the coming week of practice.

For now, though — in this piece — we’re going to look at the most important story: USC’s improved position in the race for an NCAA Tournament berth. The Trojans helped themselves a lot with this win.

The Trojans still aren’t a central factor in the Pac-12 race, but with this victory — combined with UCLA’s loss to Arizona — the Trojans are in a position to move one game behind the Bruins if they can beat them next Thursday in a season-shaping game in the Galen Center. Utah is currently in second place in the Pac-12, but the Utes still have to make the Arizona road trip USC just completed. USC improved its chances of getting a first-round bye at the Pac-12 Tournament (which goes to the top four teams in the conference), which means it will have to win only three games to win an automatic bid instead of four, should it come to that.

If the Trojans are in the hunt for an at-large bid, getting a first-round bye means they would not have to play a bottom-tier team (a No. 12 or 11 seed) in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament, which both hurts the resume and puts USC at risk of a profile-killing loss. The win over Arizona State gave USC a lot of leverage in the Pac-12.

Most of all, though, this win gives USC a quality road win on the resume, in addition to the home-court win over Auburn. Utah and Arizona State are the other bubble teams USC is fighting for position. Neither the Utes nor the Sun Devils have a Pac-12 road win as good as this one for the Trojans. Utah lost at UCLA. Arizona State has lost to UCLA and Arizona at home. ASU and Utah haven’t played each other; they eventually will in Tempe later this season.

USC isn’t ahead of Arizona State, but the Trojans are now much closer to the Sun Devils than they were before. USC probably still needs to beat either UCLA or Arizona to feel good about its NCAA Tournament chances, but this win over ASU means that if USC can really clean up against all non-UCLA, non-Arizona teams in the Pac-12, it could potentially have an alternate path to the NCAAs. A win over UCLA or Arizona now feels like a “this will definitely get UCLA into the tournament” win, as opposed to a “USC absolutely must win to have any chance” situation.

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What punter Eddie Czaplicki can do to help USC football in 2023

#USC won’t punt a lot, but when the Trojans do punt, they need to flip the field. Now they have a punter who is likely to do that on a consistent basis.

Eddie Czaplicki of Arizona State led the Pac-12 and was No. 8 in the nation with a 45.98 yard average in punting. Now he’ll be transferring to USC to play in Southern California.

The former Sun Devil blasted 16 punts over 50 yards and dropped 15 punts inside the 20.

Czaplicki, originally from Charlotte, N.C., started both seasons with the Sun Devils and was named a first-team All-Pac-12 punter this year.

He also handled 55 kickoffs, averaging 61.6 yards per attempt with 29 touchbacks.

USC didn’t have to punt very often this season, but the Trojans did not have a punter who could flip the field with great consistency. A weak USC defense needed every extra advantage it could get. Hidden yardage on special teams matters. The Trojans didn’t always stand on the right side of the equation. Special teams were very good against Washington State in Week 6, but not on a relentlessly consistent basis. Lincoln Riley pooch-punted with Caleb Williams against Notre Dame so that the Trojans didn’t have to face the Fighting Irish’s elite punt block unit. USC needed a special teams upgrade.

The Trojans have now checked that box.

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