Seven is often seen as a lucky number, but this has not been the case for ASU football this season. Thursday night's deflating game with Stanford marked the fourth game that the team has lost by seven points.
“The four games that we’ve lost, they’ve all been the same way with us,” head coach Herm Edwards said. “I’m not feeling very well about that … We’ve lost four games by one score. That’s not good enough. Those players are hurting in there and we’ve got to find a way to win those games.”
The 20-13 defeat came in the same fashion as the Sun Devils last game on Oct. 6th, which ended by a score of 28-21 in favor of Colorado, as well as the team’s two other seven-point losses.
“I’m sick and tired of coming in here and saying it’s one play away,” redshirt senior quarterback Manny Wilkins said. “We’ve got to fix it.”
Before Thursday’s game, Wilkins and offensive coordinator Rob Likens stressed the importance of getting two more touchdowns this game, as well as every other game remaining this season.
It would have made the difference in Thursday's game, but there is something blocking the Sun Devils from achieving their offensive goal.
“I think that we just need to fix the mental errors … I just feel like we’re right there,” redshirt sophomore wide receiver Frank Darby said. “We just have to get over this hump. I don’t know what it is, but it’s got to be something that we fixed in practice, something that’s got to be fixed in our drills. We’re right there, it’s a seven-point game again.”
Darby had one of the most promising offensive plays of the game, as he caught a 36-yard pass from Wilkins that enabled the Sun Devils to tie the game early when the score was only 6-6 in the third quarter.
However, ASU could not produce the amount of offense that was needed to overtake Stanford, which mirrors all three of the Sun Devils other seven-point losses.
“If I had the formula, I would feed it to them,” Edwards said. “I don’t have it right now. I like their effort. I know that, and they play hard … It’s never over for these kids. They just keep coming, they keep fighting no matter how bad it looks, and it looked bad there for a while.”
The Sun Devils used their bye week between the games against Colorado and Stanford to heal, and now they must use this upcoming week of practice to figure out how they are going to break what has become a pattern of losing by a touchdown.
Reach the reporter at pburnell@asu.edu or follow @paige_burnell on Twitter.
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