ASU 31, Cal 20

Home from a literary conference bang at 9 pm, Central Time, I sat down to Arizona State with one question to answer. Call it the Butch and Sundance question:

Who are those guys?

I knew Rudi Carpenter, sure. But as the week went along, I was faced with the very real and somewhat embarassing fact that I could not name one other player on the team.

Enter SunDevil Joe.

On that, more in a minute.

But first, in general, a few things impressed me about the Devils:

1. Both times I've seen them this season, the Devils refused to panic when things went south. Tonight, an early ASU turnover resulted in a Cal defensive touchdown. Bang, 7-0. This was followed by two long Cal drives, during which the ASU secondary seemed not only overmatched but downright confused. However, the defense dug deep with the shortened field and held Cal to two field goals. Someone reading the scoreboard, but not watching the game, might find an early 13-0 Cal lead disheartening. Anyone watching the game knew otherwise: ASU was only one touchdown away from getting back into it, whereas Cal had to be wondering why it wasn't ahead 21-0. The fulcrum was Dimitri Nance's first touchdown, which made it 13-7 and announced to everyone, We Officially Have A Game.

2. The cliche of this autumn is: The Red Sox are the new Yankees. It is too soon to tell, but the Devils may, right now, be the new Trojans. Like the Carson/Williams/Leinart/Bush Trojans, they don't panic early, they adjust well, and they hit a fresh gear at about the 10-minute mark of the third quarter. From the fifth game of the 2002 season straight through to the Washington-Stanford-Arizona poo-poo platter, the Trojans were college football's Seabiscuit, the team that might play you even through the backstretch, then turn to you, smile, say, "So long, Charlie," and score, oh, 35 unanswered points. Devil fans well remember a few of those games. Now they get to enjoy them. The longer the third quarter went on, the faster the Cal pocket collapsed, the less time DeSean Jackson had time to get open, the more panicked Tedford's offense (which is predicated on time in the pocket and turning the game into streetball) became, the worse things looked for Cal.

This, more than anything, has to be emphasized: Cal's second-half rash of injuries were not the cause of ASU's dominance, they were the result of ASU's dominance.

3. No, I have to stay on this ASU/USC comparison. The greatest game of my lifetime was the 2005 Orange Bowl: USC 55, Oklahoma 19. There were about eleventy billion things about that game I love, but the one that sticks out was when I knew the game was over. The muffed punt? Jason White's twenty-seventh interception? No, I knew the game was over when the score stood Oklahoma 7, USC 0. White was throwing off his wrong foot falling backwards, Adrian Peterson was being stood up at the line, and Lofa Tatupu and Sean Cody were missing sacks by mere inches. The Sooners converted two third-and-longs on absolute flukes, broken plays turned into cross-field passes. I thought: No way you can play like that for 60 minutes. And sure enough . . .

Now, I didn't know tonight's game was over at 13-0. But I did know the Devils had dodged a couple of bullets and were gaining confidence. They gave Cal a quarter-and-a-half. Not much. But the Bears needed to take it, and they didn't.

4. Big thanks to SunDevil Joe, who provided me with some of the names I needed to watch. A short honor roll: Dimitri Nance (three touchdowns), Keegan Haring (crucial yardage splitting time with Nance); receivers Michael Jones, Kyle Williams, Chris McGaha (how does Rudi love to distribute); and, crucially in the fourth quarter, cornerback Justin Tryon and linebacker Robert James--Tryon, for locking down Jackson as best as anyone could, and both Tryon and James, for coming up with knee-buckling fourth-quarter interceptions on consecutive Cal possessions.

Am I reading too much into two games?

Perhaps.

And Oregon--on the road--looms next week.

But this was some performance.