Old habits die hard, and Arizona State’s penalty problem came back to bite the Sun Devils in the second game of their Texas road trip.
Arizona State (3-1, 0-1 Big 12) couldn’t get out of its own way in the program’s debut in the Big 12 Conference, falling to Texas Tech (3-1, 1-0) 30-22 at Jones AT&T Stadium.
The Sun Devils suffered in the first half with penalties that extended Texas Tech’s drives and derailed their own. ASU accumulated eight penalties for 69 yards throughout the contest.
Senior wide receiver Malik McClain was flagged for illegal touching after catching a pass after he had stepped out of bounds, which ended a drive. Junior safety Myles Rowser had a free run at the quarterback for a third down sack but was flagged for taunting after the play, resulting in a Texas Tech first down. Four defensive penalties against ASU on the day resulted in first downs for the team from Lubbock.
Head coach Kenny Dillingham said the lack of disciplined play starts on the sideline with his staff.
“Unacceptable for us, and that’s my fault,” Dillingham told reporters after the game. “That’s on me. We’ve got to get that stuff cleaned up. I mean, we can blame the players all we want, but it’s not. At the end of the day, it’s our job. It’s our responsibility to get them to act, to get them to play, to get them to do their job, to sign them. That’s the beautiful thing about college coaching is everything is my fault.”
Texas Tech jumped out to an early lead with a long opening drive for a score. They were quickly gifted another opportunity after an errant pass by ASU redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt wound up in the hands of Red Raiders’ senior safety CJ Baskerville. The interception set up a two-yard touchdown pass from junior quarterback Behren Morton to junior tight end Johncarlos Miller II. Just halfway through the first quarter, Texas Tech held a commanding 14-0 lead.
Arizona State struggled to get going on the ground against a Texas Tech defense that entered the game allowing 4.78 yards per carry, good for 107th in the nation. After three Red Raiders penalties resulted in three first downs for the Sun Devils and put them in the red zone, senior running back Cam Skattebo was stuffed at the line on three straight carries to force a turnover on downs..
“We didn’t play our brand of football,” Skattebo said. “[We] got beat up a little bit up front early and then we kind of fixed it. We had a chance. Had a chance. We had some drops. We made mistakes. A lot of people made mistakes. It was a team effort. We lost that game as a team, not individually. We lost, so on to next week.”
Just before the half, the Arizona State offense briefly found its legs. Leavitt hit on passes of 27 yards and 19 yards to redshirt sophomore wide receiver Jordan Tyson and redshirt senior wide receiver Xavier Guillory, respectively, to put the Sun Devils in the red zone. Leavitt capped off a nine-play, four-minute drive with a quarterback sneak for ASU’s first touchdown of the day. Unfortunately for them, the Devils scored too quickly.
A 25-yard burst from super-senior running back Tahj Brooks and a 15-yard completion to super-senior wide receiver Josh Kelly set up Texas Tech for a short field goal to take a 17-10 at the half.
Senior tight end Jalin Conyers, who transferred from Arizona State to Texas Tech in the offseason, pushed the Red Raiders’ lead back to 14 with a three-yard touchdown run out of the wildcat formation. Conyers didn’t record a catch against his former squad, but the score was meaningful to the ex-Sun Devil.
ASU’s longest play of the day came near the end of the third quarter when Skattebo took a swing pass from Leavitt 66 yards and inside the 5-yard line of Texas Tech. Skattebo finished the three-play, 80-yard drive with a three-yard plunge into the end zone to pull the Sun Devils within eight.
Skattebo ended the day with two scores and 60 yards rushing, averaging 3.3 yards per carry. ASU’s star back has seen more defenders in the box and struggled to find running room since his career performance against Mississippi State in Week 2. Skattebo became a big part of the passing game as well, catching six passes for a career-high 117 yards.
Midway through the fourth quarter, trailing by 14, Leavitt and the offense stalled in Texas Tech territory, resulting in the unit’s third turnover on downs of the game and allowing the Red Raiders to run the ball and make the Devils use their timeouts to stop the clock.
Skattebo would score again from three yards out with less than two minutes remaining, but ASU failed to recover its onside kick to give itself a chance, sealing the 600th victory in program history for the Red Raiders.
Leavitt finished the game 22-of-38 for a career-high 282 passing yards and one interception. He also did a fair amount of scrambling on broken plays, which Kenny Dillingham believes the freshman can learn from and improve on during the season.
“Last week he scrambled to throw, a little bit,” Dillingham said. “This week he scrambled to run. I think that’s just part of the maturing process. He’s got to be able to see the different looks. The odd with the weak drop out spooked him a couple times, which is new. He’s never seen that. We’ve never shown it, except in practice this week.”
The root of the Sun Devils’ offensive woes came on crucial downs. ASU was just 5-of-13 on third down and failed to convert on all three of their fourth down attempts. Despite none of their turnovers on downs leading to Texas Tech points, the missed opportunities made it difficult for Dillingham’s squad to erase the deficit later in the game.
“We just couldn’t close out the gap all game, which I think was the frustrating part,” Dillingham said. “Our guys stayed in it and they fought, and then we just couldn’t close it.”
Arizona State will have the next week off to regroup before returning home for their Big 12 home opener against Kansas on Oct. 5.
Leave a Reply