SALT LAKE CITY – For a few minutes, it looked like ASU football (4-3, 2-2 Pac-12) had pulled another rabbit out of its hat on the road against a top-5 team.
Then, like the rain at Rice-Eccles Stadium, it all came crashing down on them.
The Sun Devils battled tough on Saturday night, eventually getting in their own way on an upset bid en route to a 34-18 loss against No. 4 Utah (6-0, 3-0 Pac-12).
ASU struggled mightily on offense, got burned on defense and still managed to be just 10 minutes and 41 seconds away from their second major upset in the last three weeks.
"I really felt like we were going to win the game the whole time," ASU head coach Todd Graham said.
He was right. Despite some of the odds — a stagnant offense that would finish with just 15 rushing yards in the absence of Demario Richard, a defense that repeatedly gave up big plays in the pass game and weather that made playing conditions difficult — ASU was still very much in the game.
ASU did so by maintaining its goal of 100 percent ball security through three quarters and forcing the Utes into their own mistakes. Utah flinched first, as a illegal forward pass penalty in its own end zone gave the Sun Devils a 15-14 lead with 5:04 remaining in the third quarter.
"We took the lead on the safety, and I really thought we were going to win," Graham said.
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said the safety came as a result of just being too aggressive with a one-point lead.
"It was an aggressive play and we wanted to keep the pedal down," Whittingham said of the play. "If the throw had gotten there, it would have been a big play...The throw was just not what it needed to be."
ASU would extend its lead to 18-14 with 1:30 remaining in the quarter, and entered the fourth quarter with strong odds to knock off the No. 4 team in the nation on the road.
That was, until they didn't.
The special teams unit, which had excelled throughout the game in returns (redshirt junior Tim White had the Sun Devils' first kickoff return touchdown since 2012 and Gump Hayes added a 48-yard punt return), kicking (junior kicker Zane Gonzalez was perfect on all kicks Saturday) and fell apart.
First, Hayes inexplicably called for a fair catch off of a punt from Utah's Tom Hackett which pinned the Sun Devils at their own 5-yard line. The offense got nothing, attempting to go deep to a marked receiver on second down and third down and forced junior punter Matt Haack to punt of out his own end zone.
It was a disaster, putting the Utes at the ASU 32-yard line and in prime position to score. Three plays later, senior running back Devontae Booker was in the back of the end zone and the Sun Devils' lead had vanished.
"We were not going to be denied," Whittingham said.
Right he was.
Redshirt senior quarterback Mike Bercovici was called upon to try to pull off yet another wild upset, yet fell back into the same trap of ball security in fumbling the exchange on a zone read. Utah recovered, essentially clinching the game.
Graham said the team's fate rested in those critical errors, which turned a season renaissance to another frustrating Saturday night in just six short minutes of game time.
"We fielded the ball inside our five and had the short punt out of bounds that hurt us," Graham said. "Then they score on the third down play, then the turnover on the read zone. That was the difference of the game."
Saturday night seemed like an encapsulation of ASU's season as a whole — promise and expectations blinding the fact that the team and program couldn't stop itself from shooting itself in the foot.
The defense attempting to overcome a struggling offense was eerily similar to ASU's season-opening loss to Texas A&M. The fumbled read zone resembled the botched play at the end of the first half in ASU's loss to USC. And yet tonight was unlike those two losses.
"I feel like this was a totally different game," Graham said. "Anybody who watched this game and that game — two totally different games. (Against Texas A&M and USC) we did self-destruct. I don't think we did that tonight."
For one, ASU held a lead against the top-5-ranked Utes. At one point, it had them on their back and with just two rushing yards in the opening half. The offense clicked at times, with Bercovici finding magic with redshirt senior Devin Lucien (six catches, 118 yards). Special teams were a marvel.
In the eyes of Graham, ASU didn't fall into its same pattern of self-destruction. Instead, it just ran up against a better team having a slightly better night.
"They're a heck of a football team and the better team tonight," Graham said. "Did we play very good offensively? Well, we had 15 yards rushing and 242 yards passing. That wasn't it."
The expectations of the Sun Devil program are clearly laid out. They're written on the walls, in meeting rooms and in everything they do: go 1-0 every day.
"At the end of the day, we lost," Graham said. "We know the magnitude of this game and that was tough. I don't think we self-destructed. I think our guys played their hearts out, and we didn't get it done."
On Saturday night, Graham's team felt they deserved to go 1-0. They just came up a few minutes short.
Reach the reporter at fardaya@asu.edu or follow @fardaya15 on Twitter.
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