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One win away from bowl eligibility, the Sun Devils will have to travel to Orlando to try and find a sixth win.
ASU head football coach Kenny Dillingham and his team are coming off an eventful weekend in Tempe, ending in a 20-10 victory over Colorado.
What is the direction of the program, now with most of the season in the rear view mirror? Here is everything Dillingham had to say in his Monday press conference:
"I thought we played well in week one. Week two, we were playing good football, and then it was like, boom, in the fourth quarter. Go to London, win a football game. Against a conference opponent. Then we got back, and we got into a funk. We lost the identity. I don't know. I can't put my finger on why that happened, but we got back, and we struggled for three weeks just playing the game the way we should play it,"
"And then the last three weeks, I thought we've played way closer (to our identity). And I think obviously players have changed, and a lot of young guys have started to step up. But I think as a collective, I think the team kind of just figured out themselves better too in the last three weeks, and we kind of lost that for three weeks. So, kind of a tale of (two halves).
"I would say definitely (it is) interesting because we played three weeks there that we're so unidentifiable (compared) to our last four years, and like I said, I put a lot of blame on myself because something may have happened. The return (from London) and how I manage the return off of the big trip and stuff like that. I feel like, obviously, I did something wrong there because you don't just have a three-week random outlier over a span of four years, like that unless there was something that I did y poorly there to manage that, so now I think we're playing competitive. We're playing hard. A lot of young guys playing, which is unbelievable for the future."
"It's all possessions, right? So we had two possessions to start the second half. One, we converted the fourth down, got towards the 50, and we miss one. Dang it! Punt. Then the other one was a bad possession, and then you're up two scores in the fourth quarter. How aggressive do you stay? Even if those are the best calls, like sometimes aggressive is you can be aggressive by putting your defense on the field. That is aggressive. I am doubling down on our defense. There's a mindset that is aggressive, just as much as you can be aggressive on offense."
"So I think that's just what I guess I'm trying to manage. It's just trying to win the football game. But obviously, when we didn't score those first two drives coming out of the half, that compounds when you do get a little more conservative. So I do understand like the perception of that could be, 'wow, what happened?' But in reality it was like, man, we were close on a third down where we just missed the guy. We complete it, who knows what happens on the drive? It could be a different narrative. But part of that is just scoring the game in the fourth quarter. Third quarter, we've got to play better. Fourth quarter, probably conservative nature, so I would say a balance of both."
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"You want to find more balance. Football is so funny because it's like, 'Oh man, we didn't give him the ball.' 'Oh man, got him a bit too much.' It's so results-driven that you can't get distracted by what you think, by what the results were. Because if those carries would have equated to 200 yards, then there'd be a different narrative."
"We just got to say what we think is the best plan over the last three weeks, and then we're figuring out that balance. But I do agree with you, he (Mack) was on the field too much. We got to keep legs fresh, and we got to balance that with Kyson (Brown) and balance that with Man-Man (Demarius Robinson) for sure. I don't think there's a guy in this building who thinks differently than that.
"But, he's played so well. I think we're in the 'How do we get him the ball? Get him the ball. Get him to the ball.' It's like, 'Ah, got the ball too much. Not that much.' We want to get the ball, but not that much. So I think we just have to be better there, managing that (running) back rep count."
"It's the new age in college football. It's changing all the time. So just adapt and adjust. That (change) could change how teams build rosters. It could change how teams scheme. Because with more teams getting in, nobody's gonna want to face a team that runs midline or under center triple option. They're the 24th seed. I'll tell you that much. You'd rather be the number two seed than the number one seed."
"So I mean, I think it changes the game a little bit because once you get into that tournament, there's so many types of schemes you can run on offense and defense, right? I think the uniqueness of scheme, because you're playing across conferences, can become an advantage for teams, and it can become very challenging to go versus when you're in a week-to-week tournament, and in college, schemes are so drastically different. So it could become interesting, just kind of how that plays out and how teams take that and try to create an edge for their program, knowing that more teams get in."
"Speed, I would say, stands out. Explosiveness, they're multiple on both sides of the ball. Offensively, I think they do a great job with formations and shifts and motions and getting guys down the field. They ran a two-by-two slot post the other night, but they released the boundary tight end to pull the quarter safety down. Where most teams seven-man pro it, but they wanted to try to keep the boundary safety. A very good scheme that's very sound, that is purposeful."
"Sometimes you face teams, and they kind of just do what they do. I think this is a very purposeful offense. They do things to attack what you're in, as opposed to 'this is what we're running' regardless. And then on defense, I think they attack. They play a bunch of coverages. They play a ton of man, a ton of quarters. They love the two-sims from different angles, blitzing corners, blitzing nickels, gut crossing. So I would say it's just a team that's built around attacking on both sides of the football, and they have really, really good team speed. So when you attack, and you have team speed, it can create explosives for them on defense and explosives for them on offense."
"This is a great environment here (at Central Florida). The last time I was at this place, we lost like 56 or 54 to like 47 in overtime versus UCF, when I was at Memphis in the championship game of the American, and we lost because our tight end, I kid you not-versus Scott Frost, it just drives me nuts-blocked the defensive end of a player back into the offensive line, and he pushed him back so far the ball fell into (his arms) and boom, picked it off on the goal line. It gives me nightmares, still, so that's my vision of this place. But the Bounce House is a place that's always rocking. Great environment, and like I said, that's my last memory there, and obviously (Head) Coach (Scott) Frost was there at the same time."
Dillingham will hope for a better memory of this trip to Orlando, with ASU and UCF set for action in Florida this Saturday, Nov. 14, 1:30 p.m. MST on ESPN2.