If you had told fans around Phoenix that the ASU football team would be 4-3 heading into its game against Oregon on Thursday, many would not have believed you.
But, with over half the season gone, that’s exactly where the Sun Devils find themselves, needing to win out for a chance at the Pac-12 Championship Game.
“Every game from here on out is important,” redshirt senior wide receiver Devin Lucien said. “We’ve got to win every game to get to where we want to get to. Every week’s a championship.”
Lucien noted that ASU has been “two plays away” from winning each of its three losses this season and said, while it could impact focus, the Sun Devils can’t dwell on what’s already happened.
“Of course it’s frustrating,” Lucien said. “But to move past it you just have to keep going. You can’t stay on anything in this league.”
Instead of toiling in the most recent fourth quarter collapse against Utah two weeks ago, ASU refocused with work on fundamentals heading in to this game, with extended work on forcing turnovers.
What was the calling card of the Sun Devil defense in coach Todd Graham’s first three seasons has been nonexistent in 2015 and has been a major factor in losses.
Graham harped each day on generating bigger plays defensively, especially with the amount of tackles for loss and sacks the defense is getting.
"I think we're playing better in our run defense and setting a record pace in TFLs and sacks and all that," Graham said. "Nobody cares if you've got the best defense in the world; you lose, nobody cares.
Despite the lack of takeaways, though, the defense has kept ASU in games all season despite a clunky offense.
"We have a lot of new parts, so we're going to get it all together," Lucien said. "We'll be fine."
Eight games in, however, is not the ideal time to be waiting for the offense to gel. But if there's an opponent to do it against it's the Oregon Ducks.
Oregon's pass defense enters Thursday ranked 121st in the nation allowing 306.6 yards per game this season. The 22 touchdown passes allowed by the Ducks is the most by any team in the country.
While many outside will focus on the yards given up, the offense has to focus on doing its job so it's harder for the Ducks to do theirs, Lucien said.
"I think we just have to do everything Coach (Mike) Norvell tells us to do and execute the plays," Lucien said. "I think that will help us to do what we have to do rather than try exploit them."
That plan uses a lot of up-tempo offense, something the Sun Devils have been uncharacteristically slow in this year, leading to some re-calibration for this week.
"It all starts with setting your feet and just having a sense of urgency," Bercovici said. "It's a self-discipline sense of urgency. You can't have people yelling at you to line up. It's got to be within yourself and I think we got that accomplished this bye week and heading into this week."
With the offense slowly gaining momentum, the Sun Devils believe they can finally put up points at a rate they are used to by focusing and taking care of the ball, which they haven't done all season.
With Bercovici as the main culprit, ASU has turned the ball over a lot this year and has played with fire a lot more, as the Sun Devils have recovered 11 of their 19 fumbles. Despite that record, Graham said ASU can turn it around and that could make all the difference in the world.
"Man, it's time to rise up and finish and don't worry about anything other than I think the team that we're playing, Oregon, is at full strength," Graham said. "I think that it's no doubt you look at what their program is about, the challenge ahead of us, but the key for us is to take care of the football. That's the key. If we take care of the football, we're going to win. That's how simple it is."
Reach the reporter at mtonis@asu.edu or follow @Tonis_The_Tiger on Twitter.
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