The logjam close to the highest of the Huge 12 Convention is in for a shake-up when Arizona State travels to No. 16 Kansas State on Saturday night time for his or her first matchup as convention foes.
Arizona State owns a 5-1 report all-time towards the Wildcats. Ok-State gained the final assembly within the 2002 Vacation Bowl. The groups final met within the common season in 1989.
Arizona State (7-2, 4-2 Huge 12) gained consecutive video games to affix a four-team cluster in third place within the convention. Kansas State (7-2, 4-2) is coming off a bye following a painful loss to Houston two weeks in the past.
“We’re 2-2 on the street, so you’d hope that we might play properly on the street,” Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham mentioned Monday. “That is a extremely good atmosphere and a extremely good workforce, coming off a bye, sadly.”
An enormous query for the Solar Devils is the well being of working again Cam Skattebo, who missed ASU’s final recreation, a win over UCF, with a shoulder harm. Skattebo has rushed for 1,001 yards in eight video games performed.
“Skatt is questionable for the sport,” Dillingham mentioned. “I feel he will attempt to apply, at the very least jog by means of some issues and run round just a little bit. In order that’s a optimistic. He was attempting to get me to place him within the recreation (towards UCF) in the midst of the third quarter.
“I used to be like, ‘No, you are not going to get suited up.’ We’ll see what it appears like for this week.”
Ok-State returned to apply Monday after the bye week.
“We had a great open week final week,” Wildcats head coach Chris Klieman mentioned. “We gave our older guys who’ve performed quite a lot of snaps a little bit of a break from a restoration standpoint. Now we have various guys who’re nonetheless nursing accidents, however I imagine everybody might be accessible Saturday.”
As an alternative of trying again at what went mistaken towards Houston, Klieman mentioned the main target is on what’s nonetheless forward.
“I feel it is the every day enchancment,” he added. “It is the large image. What do we’ve got to get higher schematically, each offensively and defensively? It generally will get forgotten that we’re a 7-2 soccer workforce that has quite a lot of issues in entrance of us to play for. We will not management what different groups are going to do. I feel everybody is aware of that rather a lot can nonetheless occur.”
The groups are virtually similar when it comes to scoring offense, with the Solar Devils outscoring the Wildcats by .3 factors per recreation. They each additionally rely closely on the run. The Wildcats are third within the convention with 208.3 yards per recreation on the bottom, whereas Arizona State is fourth at 198.0 yards per recreation.
Defensively, Ok-State sits atop the speeding yards allowed record with simply 99.4 yards per recreation. ASU is third at 118.8 yards per recreation.
“Anyone can beat anyone on this league,” Klieman mentioned. “We’re enjoying a extremely good Arizona State workforce that is a scorching workforce. So we have to play our greatest soccer.”
–Subject Stage Media