Coach Todd Graham looks towards the field from the sideline at a home game in Tempe. The next game for the Sun Devils is on the road against Washington State. (Photo by State Press Staff)When ASU football travels to Washington State to face the Cougars on Thursday, weather.com predicts the high temperature in Pullman to be 51 degrees.
Sun Devils’ coach Todd Graham doesn’t care one bit.
Graham told the media in his weekly press conference that he plans to keep any negative thoughts about the weather out of the minds of his coaches and players.
“I tell our guys, ‘Don’t answer questions about how the weather affects you,’” Graham said. “If we are on the road, and you ask one of our coaches, and he says something about the weather, I’ll tell him to go get a meteorologist job.”
Graham continually stressed the importance of focusing on the game itself and not the distractions, like the weather, surrounding it.
Graham said if his team can do that, it has a good shot of earning its first road victory of the season.
“(The weather) is a part of it,” Graham said. “I can sit here and say, ‘Oh it’s going to be cold’ or ‘Oh it’s going to be this,’ but there’s no excuses.”
Road games, though limited so far this season, have been a struggle for the Sun Devils thus far.
Their first road contest ended in defeat at Stanford by a 42-28 score that was nowhere near as close as it appeared.
The only other game the Sun Devils have played away from Tempe resulted in their second defeat of the season, a 37-34 loss to Notre Dame in Dallas.
Those games were played in fair weather, though, another reason why Graham is putting the cold out of sight.
“You don’t win on the road because you’re not prepared and you’re not focused and don’t play well,” Graham said. “That’s it. That’s why people get beat on the road.”
Pullman weather wasn’t kind to the Sun Devils the last time they played there in 2011, though.
The temperature was 32 degrees and rainy at kickoff, and the Sun Devils fell 37-27 to the Cougars, effectively ending their shot at winning the Pac-12 South.
Graham wasn’t the coach then, but the situation is similar.
The Sun Devils lead the South by a game, and Graham hopes his weather alert will resonate with his team.
“If you want to be a champion. There are no excuses,” Graham said. “You go whether it’s rain, sleet, snow or Alaska or Maine or wherever it’s at, you have to go win. That’s the mindset, and I have to think a certain way, because I’m still working on that.”
Reach the reporter at dsshapi1@asu.edu or on Twitter @DsShapi
