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Explosive offense plus high scoring equals an ASU-Stanford rivalry.

Fortunately for the Sun Devils, the outcome figured on their side Saturday afternoon.

ASU celebrated a 41-point victory in a game that was a shootout from the beginning at Sun Devil Stadium. Stanford won the coin toss and took the ball 65 yards downfield in the first 1:12 to grab an early 7-0 lead. But ASU countered two minutes later when sophomore quarterback Andrew Walter hit junior wide receiver Shaun McDonald for a 27-yard touchdown pass.

After Stanford was forced to punt, the Sun Devils scored again. But the Cardinal answered right back and trailed 14-13 before even 10 minutes had run off the clock. It set up another offensive onslaught, something both Stanford and ASU have become accustomed to in recent years.

Last season, the Sun Devils were handed a brutal 51-28 defeat in Palo Alto, Calif. The game started in similar fashion with frequent first-quarter scoring.

But in 2001, Stanford kept the machine running, while ASU's offense fell by the wayside. This year was a completely different story.

"To get whooped like that in their home, we had to come back and do it to them," McDonald said. "We've just got to keep the rhythm and get more wins in the Pac-10."

Despite McDonald's feelings, Walter was not looking for revenge. Instead, he wanted to get his team headed in the right direction for the remainder of the season.

"It doesn't motivate me to think about last year," Walter said. "It's a whole different team and a different attitude. In my mind, we were just trying to make a statement in the first Pac-10 game."

It was indeed apparent that the Sun Devils were looking to make a statement, as their scoring barrage never let up during the course of the afternoon. With his team leading 21-13 late in the first quarter, ASU head coach Dirk Koetter decided to go for the end zone after junior Eric Johnson botched a punt.

Walter hit senior tight end Mike Pinkard for a touchdown to put an exclamation point on a 28-point first quarter. The offensive output matched last season's point total against the Cardinal.

The Sun Devils continued to show no mercy in the second half. When leading 38-16, ASU took the kickoff after the break and scored on an 80-yard, four-play drive in just 1:54.

It marked the first of three third-quarter touchdowns. ASU's scoring was capped in the fourth quarter when senior place-kicker Mike Barth nailed a pair of field goals.

ASU's 65 points marked the most it has ever scored against a Pac-10 opponent. The Sun Devils dropped 62 points on Stanford in 1981 when former Cardinal quarterback John Elway was calling the signals behind center.

The mind-boggling numbers point to a rivalry over the previous four years that has seen a ton of scoring. Dating back to 1999, Stanford has outscored ASU 154-130 and has won three of the last four meetings.

ASU's 65 points equaled its total offensive output for the previous three games between the teams. But even Koetter wasn't looking to get back at Stanford.

"We had some players that talked about that, but I'm not into the revenge factor," he said. "This is a different team, and we need to take care of business based on what we're doing this year. Last year's over. I'm much more into what we're doing for the future. It's about where this program is going, not about what happened in the past."

Reach the reporter at casey.pritchard@asu.edu.


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