How Kenny Dillingham views ASU vs. Arizona as another season
There are two seasons for Arizona State football.
There’s the first 11 games of the season, and then there’s rivalry week.
Kenny Dillingham of all people knows how important this week is for ASU, and he’s going to make sure his team full of newer players also realizes the importance of playing Arizona.
“There’s two seasons when you play at ASU. There’s the first 11 games and that’s one season. And then there’s the team down South week and that’s entirely another season,” Dillingham said. “You only play 11 regular season games and you play one entire season and it takes seven days to play it.”
Traditionally, this isn’t a normal week of preparation for ASU. Now that the Sun Devils are coached by an alumnus, Dillingham feels more of a responsibility to teach the history. Some of those responsibilities involve replaying the final moments of Arizona’s 38-35 win from last season on a loop to drill in the message.
“Usually, last games of the year you don’t really talk about,” Dillingham said. “We’re going to clean up things we need to fix fundamentally. This is it right here.”
Now that ASU has entered the final week of the season, all that has happened leading up to the week has been written off for the Sun Devils.
The six-game losing streak, the near upset bids, the injuries, and other defining factors of this season are put away. Or at least, most of it is. ASU will still have to maneuver around injuries no matter what as the Sun Devils have missed a total of 127 man games.
The final game likely won’t return many players for the undermanned Sun Devils, but the backfield could get some help. Running back DeCarlos Brooks has previously been practicing with the team and could relieve Cameron Skattebo at running back.
“Hopefully, we’re going to get DeCarlos back this week so that’s going to help us from that perspective on (Skattebo) not having to do as much,” Dillingham said. “Some of our best football games that we have played on offense have been with DeCarlos back there and being able to give Skat a break.”
Quarterback Jaden Rashada was practicing last week and warmed up pre-game on Saturday, but a return for him is unknown. Rashada is eligible to return and preserve his redshirt status if Dillingham wants to use him. The true freshman is still ASU's leader in passing touchdowns with three in two games.
Saturday’s lopsided loss to Oregon is far from Dillingham’s mind now with Arizona (8-3, 6-2) not only coming to Mountain America Stadium, but coming in with a chance to make the Pac-12 Championship game. Arizona handily defeated Utah 42-18 at home last week.
“They’re very simple, they don’t bust. There’s not many wide-open spaces on the tape because they’re simple defensively,” Dillingham said. “There’s two ways to play defense, you can either be really aggressive and attack or you can be really simple. They’re aggressive up front with their defensive coordinator being a defensive line guy, but they’re super simple in their back end.”
Arizona's visit will draw attention regardless and Dillingham is already seeing an uptick with his players ahead of Saturday's afternoon game.
"The intensity level has to increase and your intensity level should always be high, but you should be able to show an even heightened intensity," Dillingham said. "The players are going to be able to feed off real energy and passion and they’re going to feel it. When you educate them on it, you got to show them that it matters. It matters to me, so they’re naturally going to feel that vibe from myself.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Kenny Dillingham views ASU vs. Arizona as another season
