ASU Football: The road ahead to a potential Pac-12 South Title

The last time we saw Arizona State football, Utah trounced the Sun Devils in the second half to take hold of the Pac-12 South. While ASU was on its bye week, Utah suffered its first conference loss to Oregon State and UCLA fell to Oregon. Utah still has the tiebreaker lead over the Sun Devils, but the race is open.

Currently the South race is ASU and Utah with a 3-1 conference record, UCLA sits at 3-2. USC is still hanging on at 2-3, needing quite the run to make any noise. Colorado and Arizona are bad, real bad.

Arizona State has five games left, and the Sun Devils should be two-touchdown favors — like they are against Washington State this upcoming weekend — in more than half of them. A trip to Washington seems scary but that team looks like a bunch of lost puppies right now. And Arizona is probably the worst Power Five team currently. Washington State doesn’t even have its head coach. Losing any of those three games should be inexcusable to the Sun Devils.

USC travels to Tempe on Nov. 6. The Trojans always have talent but give up a lot of points, don’t score consistently and probably care about who their next head coach is going to be. This won’t be a gimme game like the other three mentioned about, but a home loss would certainly be a Always Something University moment.

Then there’s the game that haunts Sun Devil fans. The November trip to Corvallis, Ore. The kicker there is that this Oregon State team is legit good. The Beavers have been nearly flawless since a Week 1 loss to Purdue, as a Washington State loss with bad quarterback play doomed them a few weeks ago. That’s the toughest matchup left on the Arizona State schedule.

USC would need to beat Arizona State to have any shot at the Pac-12 South, and probably means the Sun Devils would be knocked out of the race. The key game is this weekend when Utah hosts UCLA. A Utah win probably ends UCLA’s chances, yet a Bruins victory means Arizona State holds its own destiny for the South. Even if Utah beats the Bruins, they still have to play Oregon at home, which would be the Sun Devils last hope as its hard to see Stanford, Arizona or Colorado giving the Utes much of a fight.

So what are our thoughts about the road ahead?