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Shuffled into a 12-game schedule, the ASU football team’s trip to Salt Lake City this Saturday doesn’t appear to stand out among the crowd.
Utah isn’t as glamorous of an opponent as Missouri, Southern California or Oregon.
No, the Utes (2-2, 0-2 Pac-12) aren’t headline grabbers, but they provide an interesting challenge for the No. 22 Sun Devils (4-1, 2-0 Pac-12).
Utah doesn’t play Oregon or Stanford during the regular reason, so even though the school already has two conference losses, the Utes’ biggest challenge left on their schedule is clearly ASU.
And in the event of a tie atop the Pac-12 South standings, head-to-head plays the first role in deciding who goes to the inaugural conference championship game.
So the stakes Saturday are clear: If the Sun Devils win, they put a stranglehold on the south division. If they lose, it’s wide open all over again.
“It almost counts as two games,” senior wide receiver Aaron Pflugrad said. “Both teams know how important this is. You can’t really lose in the South much. We have to take care of business.”
After losing its first two Pac-12 games in school history, obviously another loss would hurt Utah more than ASU, which puts the pressure squarely on the shoulders of the Sun Devils.
“It is always a good situation to have the target be on you because that means you’ve been playing well,” junior quarterback Brock Osweiler said. “We are going to come in very focused, do to the studying that we need to do and execute out there, because we do realize how big of a football game this is, especially to Utah.”
The Utes will be without their starting quarterback Jordan Wynn, however, who suffered a shoulder injury against Washington last week.
Instead, junior transfer Jon Hays will get the nod.
“We really think he’s equally good,” senior defensive lineman Bo Moos said. “He can run though so we’ve been practicing for everything just in case. You don’t know what to expect when there’s a new guy in there.”
On the defensive side for the Utes, they’ll show the Sun Devils different looks to mix up their attack.
“We’re going to have to play better on offense than we did last week,” coach Dennis Erickson said. “They’ll blitz and they’ll bring them from different places. When you play a three-man front, you can bring them from different spots. Then they can play four-down and they can create some confusion for you.”
If ASU is to win, the team will have to exorcise its demons of not playing well on the road.
Over the last three seasons, the Sun Devils are 4-13 away from home, including a loss earlier this year at Illinois, 17-14.
“We haven't played very well on the road so to go into Utah, especially in that environment, and get a win would be huge,” Osweiler said. “But to do that you have to understand your assignments, the game plan, what you're trying to do and besides that, you have to match the other team's intensity and kind of exceed it.
“When you're on the road, you don't have too many people behind you,” he said. “It's the guys on the field and the guys on the sideline and that's your group.”
Reach the reporter at tyler.emerick@asu.edu
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