With a quick turnaround after a 30-23 win over Mississippi State on Saturday, it doesn’t get any easier for ASU this week as they face a fellow undefeated school in Texas State on Thursday.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Arizona State (2-0) is coming off of back-to-back wins to open the 2024 season, with a 48-7 blowout victory over Wyoming followed up by the first SEC win in Sun Devil football history a couple of days ago. Texas State (2-0), on the other hand, beat Lamar 34-27 before a dominant 49-10 victory over UTSA.
While Arizona State has gone up against arguably tougher competition than Texas State has thus far, don’t discredit the Bobcats because they are a team full of individual competitors who will pounce on any little mistake at any given time.
Texas State ready to strike with aggressiveness
Last season, the Bobcats hired GJ Kinne as its head coach who happened to be the third youngest in the FBS at the time (age 34).
In his first season in charge, he helped guide Texas State to a 4-4 record in the Sun Belt Conference and 8-5 overall. Reaching the eight-win mark, it was the highest single-season win total in the school’s history as a FBS program. Texas State had nine consecutive seasons with no winning records beforehand. They went on to win the 2023 SERVPRO First Responder Bowl over Rice 45-21 in late December.
Seeing what Kinne has been able to do to get the Bobcats to where they are today, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham spoke highly of him and the work that he has put in to construct the team he has and piecing each game plan together to win.
“Kudos to him, he’s one of the youngest coaches in college football. I think he has put together an incredible football team,” Dillingham said about Kinne at Monday’s press conference. “I think people should talk more about the job that he’s done. He’s going to be on most head coaches ‘Watch Lists’ to be a head coach in a Power 4 level here in the next four months because of the job he’s done. This is a football team that is a Power 4 football team. This team can go and win a lot of football games and compete in the Big 12 Conference. Kudos to him because he has really good players he’s recruited, they bought into his culture and they are playing really, really hard.”
One of those recruits who has hit the ground running since arriving in San Marcos, Tex. is quarterback Jordan McCloud.
McCloud started his collegiate career with two years (2019-20) at the University of Southern Florida. He then transferred to the Sun Devils’ arch-nemesis Arizona for a season (2021), went to James Madison last year and is now at Texas State. In his first two games as a Bobcat, he has completed 39-of-57 passes for 547 yards and five touchdowns.
Having five years of college experience, McCloud knows what it takes to succeed at a high level, something Dillingham expressed is one of the reasons his defense will have to be aware at all times since he will have a bunch of tricks up his sleeve.
“He played really, really well last year before he transferred over,” Dillingham said. “In his first few games, he has been efficient with the football, he can extend plays. He’s got a really quick release, super quick release and doesn’t get hit very much because his release is fast and he knows where to go with the ball. He’s a seasoned vet in the game. I feel we got to disrupt his rhythm which is what you do to every quarterback and try to do to every guy. We can’t let him get in a rhythm like he has been and just let him play catch and let him throw because he has a really good understanding of where to get the ball to. We got to be able to cover these guys.”
Seeing what they did to frustrate UTSA on Saturday with their defensive pressure, Dillingham also credited Texas State’s defensive coordinator and former NFL player Dexter McCoil Sr.
Even though the Roadrunners posted 334 yards of total offense, the Bobcats nullified any serious scoring threat and the first-year coordinator McCoil Sr. was at the forefront of the reason why they won in the fashion they did. Between blitzing aggressively and limiting UTSA to an average of just 2.7 rushing yards per carry, Texas State gave them practically no chance to get anything going offensively.
After watching some film and analyzing what the Sun Devils are up against, Dillingham knows some of what is going to be thrown at them when ASU is on offense while other areas on the attack will be different.
“Blitz, they’re gonna blitz,” Dillingham said. “They’re going to blitz and going to blitz a lot on early downs. Their D-line is very athletic, they create chaos. Sometimes there is two in a gap, they bring field two trap pressure on early downs, and heavy trap and make you throw field holeshots. These guys play very, very aggressive defensively, and we got to be ready to combat that on early downs. That’s who they are. I don’t care that they know that we know that, that’s why we watch film. We got to be able to combat that pressure.
“How they attack? I think that’s a little bit of the unknown. We can watch all of last year’s film all we want but they are a little bit different this year in terms of how their new coordinator attacks. Obviously he is one of the younger coordinators in college football, and I think he’s done an unbelievable job in his first two games coordinating. He’s a guy who used to be a high school coach and took a team to heights that they never saw, got to college really, really quickly. The guy gets his defense to play at such a high level of energy and he’s aggressive. When you play at that level of energy like he’s getting them to play and they are aggressive, that’s what makes them dangerous. Hard to create big plays when people are running the ball and they create negative plays because of how aggressive they are. It’s going to be a great challenge for us.”
Arizona State clash with Texas State on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. PT. To watch, the game will be on ESPN.
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Reporter Alec Cipollini covers ASU Athletics, the Phoenix Mercury and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account, @AlecCipollini
