On a day filled with upset after upset after upset, ASU hopes to be the sixth college football team to knock off a ranked opponent. The biggest upset of the day came early this afternoon when Northwestern beat up on the then-undefeated, yet still-unimpressive #4 Iowa.
USC, to be certain, is a very good football team with a lot of high-quality athletes. ASU, while improving their recruiting rankings since the arrival of Coach Dennis Erickson, is still years away from fielding a team that can be truly competitive with the Trojans.
Tonight will be an important gut check game for the Sun Devils. Will they be able to shrug off their heartbreaking loss against Cal last Saturday afternoon? Will their defense put in the requisite effort to stop this Trojan horse? Will Danny Sullivan hit his receivers in stride?
All of these questions need to be answered in a positive manner by this team, or else they will be subjected to an embarrassing loss.
Speaking of hitting receivers in stride, Danny Sullivan has been doing a poor job of this in 2009. On plays as simple as out routes or WR screens, it seems to be a common occurrence for the receiver to have to jump in order to catch the ball. This is an issue that points not towards a quarterback's preparation, but to his overall ability.
We all know that from a talent standpoint, Sullivan is a below average PAC-10 QB. But in order to stand a chance against a team such as USC, we need our quarterback to be able to keep his WR's feet on the ground.
Anyway, the game starts in 32 minutes, and as it stands, I hope all of the fans are still out tailgating. Otherwise, this is going to be another sparsely attended game at Sun Devil Stadium. In all likelihood, the mass amounts of USC fans will pick up the Valley's slack.
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