TEMPE — Last December, Arizona State shined on the conference’s biggest stage, rolling past the Iowa State Cyclones 45-19 in the Big 12 Championship in Arlington, Texas.
From start to finish, coach Kenny Dillingham’s squad reshaped expectations, taking ASU from a team picked to finish last in the conference’s preseason media poll to a first-place finish as Big 12 champions.
Flash forward to early November of 2025, and, despite having the same number of conference losses at this point last year, Spaky’s postseason outlook appears more bleak.
It’s partially because Dillingham’s squad faces a myriad of injuries and lack a clear path back to the Big 12 Championship after suffering its first home loss since 2023 against Houston last Saturday.
“Like I told the guys, I was pretty mad in the locker room, but at the end, it’s like, listen, we’re in the same spot we were last year,” Dillingham said after falling to the Cougars 24-16 on Oct. 25. “We just got to go get better.”
As the Sun Devils and Cyclones get set to square off for a rematch of their championship duel on Saturday, ASU prepares to be without some of its stars.
The Sun Devils won’t have sophomore quarterback Sam Leavitt for the rest of the season and will likely be without standout junior wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, as the pair continue to combat lingering injuries.
For the Maroon and Gold it’s about embracing a “next man up” mentality.
“We fight,” Dillingham said. “We don’t quit. There’s one thing our teams will always do. Our teams are going to fight. I really think that as long as you have that fight in your program, I think the program’s gonna be in a good spot.”
Leavitt first suffered an injury in Arizona State’s Big 12 opener against Baylor, and it hasn’t fully healed since, forcing him to get surgery.
He returned the following week against TCU at Mountain America Stadium but sat out in a blowout loss at Utah, where the Utes rolled 42–10 in Salt Lake City.
Leavitt tried to push through the injury again last week against Houston, only to re-aggravate the ankle. As a result, he will miss the remainder of the season.
“Sam got re-tweaked there at the end,” Dillingham said. “He got tweaked at the beginning, and we sent him in to get some imaging. He wanted to go right back in, and I said, ‘No, you’re going to get imaging before you go back in, don’t care how you feel.’ Then, he came back. Then, at the end, he tweaked himself again, so we held him out.”
Senior quarterback Jeff Sims will take his place, making his third start as a Sun Devil in the past two seasons. This season, he has a completion percentage of 49% and 284 yards combined through the air and on the ground.
“He’s got a ton of game experience,” Dillingham said. “Our guys like him, and they’ve got a lot of confidence in him. We’ve just got to go play our best football game.”
As the team places its trust and confidence in Sims, he aims to lead the injury-riddled Sun Devils to victory despite being touchdown-underdogs.
“This team doesn’t ever quit,” Sims said. “That just speaks volumes about our team.”
But Leavitt is just the start of ASU’s injury concerns. Tyson — one of the rising stars in college football — will also likely miss Saturday’s matchup.
He injured his hamstring against No. 7 Texas Tech on Saturday Oct. 18 and was sidelined against Houston.
ASU hopes to respond after its first loss in Tempe in over 10 games, as they travel up to Ames to take on the Cyclones on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at Jack Trice Stadium.
Although a tall task lies ahead, the squad remains confident that it can at least compete in its Big 12 championship rematch with Iowa State.
“I hope so,” Dillingham said when asked if ASU can bounce back following its loss to Houston. “That’s what we talked about all offseason — responding to adversity — and we’ve done that so far this year. This will probably be the toughest test, anytime you have some guys out. But there are no excuses.”
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