After pulling off a jaw-dropping 48-7 victory over Wyoming last week, there is a huge buzz around ASU football as they look to continue its momentum heading into Saturday against Mississippi State.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!This will be the first-ever matchup between the Bulldogs and Sun Devils, with Arizona State going up against a school in the SEC. ASU has not beaten a team from the SEC in its program’s history since the three wins against Missouri and one over Oklahoma were during a time when they were both not a part of the conference.
Winning 10 straight non-conference games since Sept. 3, 2022, Mississippi State has dominated its competition away from its SEC counterparts. Since 2017, the Bulldogs are 26-5 in non-conference encounters.
This past Saturday, MSU got their season up and running by crushing Eastern Kentucky 56-7. Led by Baylor transfer Blake Shapen, they produced 450 yards of total offense. Shapen completed 15-of-20 passes for 247 yards and three touchdowns while wide receiver Mario Craver scored two touchdowns.
What made Mississippi State’s first win of the year even more impressive is that it scored five of its six touchdowns in five plays or less offensively, and its time of possession was an average of 1:38 per scoring drive.
With Shapen and new head coach Jeff Lebby having a successful debut as a tandem, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham believes this game will test his defense because of how quick the Bulldogs’ tempo is when snapping the ball for the next play.
“If you sack their quarterback or make a great play on the perimeter, do your little seatbelt dance and look to the sideline, they already snapped another ball,” Dillingham said postpractice on Wednesday. “You got to get up and go to the next play immediately, it is the ultimate ‘Flush It’ game. Not only flush it, flush it, sprint, get lined up and communicate instantly. They snap the ball 40 yards down the field and snap it 13 seconds later, that’s remarkable… That’s why you have to do things different is you got to get lined up. If you just get lined up, it helps your defense to have a chance. If you don’t get lined up, they are going to have explosive plays and it’s going to be a long night.”
Echoing what Dillingham identified as what makes the Bulldogs dangerous, Sun Devils defensive coordinator Brian Ward highlighted the key areas that MSU will look to exploit.
“Shapen is an experienced quarterback, he’s elusive, he’s an athletic quarterback,” Ward said. “It’s going to be a lot different than what we saw last week. They spread the ball around a lot and offensively what they do with their RPOs [Run-pass options] and quick game is they try to protect their quarterback. You’re going to see the ball in the air a lot and they are also going to set it up with their run game.
“They try to get you out of position with their tempo, they may be the fastest team we will see all year. They do a great job of getting defenses misaligned or running by cornerbacks, guys getting lazy with their technique. Hopefully we get aligned and play fast.”
Mississippi State was 5-7 last season, with a clean 4-0 non-conference record. When they clashed against another team from the Valley last year, they pulled out a dramatic 31-24 overtime victory over the Sun Devils’ arch-rival, the University of Arizona.
Having the history they have against the SEC, Dillingham doesn’t want all of the attention to solely be on breaking the curse but believes it would be a bonus if they can pull it off.
“We are not worried about that, it doesn’t change our process,” Dillingham said. “Our process should be the exact same thing, but is there an added benefit if you can be the first team to win a game like that? Is it not a benefit that Mississippi State circled this game as ‘We’re going to win’ before the season? You have to, you have to look at us on the schedule going into this season saying ‘We’re going to win this game.’ Is there an added benefit that those two things are happening? Oh yeah.”
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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
