Tim White, Mike Bercovici, Jordan Simone Colorado postgame from The State Press on Vimeo.
While the students were away, the ASU football team came to play.
The Sun Devils (4-2, 2-1 Pac-12), in front of a relatively empty Sun Devil Stadium, dominated the Colorado Buffaloes from start to finish en route to a 48-23 victory.
The ASU offense got going early, taking its first drive 91 yards for a touchdown, scoring on a 28-yard run after a fumble recovery by redshirt junior tight end Kody Kohl.
Redshirt senior quarterback Mike Bercovici said the team works on turnover drills every day in practice, and their preparation paid off.
"We practice those situations," Bercovici said. "Fumble drills, hectic situations and Kody is one of the smartest football players on our team and it's just a tribute to his character being around the ball, following the ball."
On the ensuing Colorado drive, freshman safety Kareem Orr intercepted junior quarterback Sefo Liufau and brought the ball back to the 15-yard line, resulting in Bercovici finding Kohl for the first of a career-high five touchdown passes to give ASU a 14-0 lead.
The Sun Devils had a hard time getting off to a quick start in their first four games, scoring just one first quarter touchdown. In their past two games, however, ASU scored three. Coach Todd Graham said that, while scoring early is important, it's the plays that lead to points that are important to get.
"You know, that's been huge," Graham said. "What you see today, blocking a punt, getting takeaways, that's something that, in the early games, we didn't get a lot of those."
The Sun Devils kept the pressure on after allowing a long touchdown play, scoring 10 more points and taking a 24-7 lead less than a minute into the second quarter.
The barrage kept coming from ASU in the third quarter, touchdowns on each of its first two drives of the second half and taking any sliver of momentum that remained on the Colorado sideline.
On the defensive side of the ball, the Sun Devil front line kept Liufau under duress all night. Led by redshirt senior Antonio Longino's two and a half sacks, the Sun Devils took down Liufau eight times and kept him uncomfortable every step of the way, something redshirt senior safety Jordan Simone said helped the secondary do its job better.
"It helps everything that we do," Simone said. "When you have a guy like that making plays, disrupting the quarterback, the quarterback thinks about that in the next plays and starts getting rid of it quicker and making bad choices and we were able to capitalize on some of the mistakes he made."
Liufao agreed that the pressure affected him in the pocket, but he did his best to overcome the swarm of Sun Devils in the backfield.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s tough but you just have to put it in the corner of your mind and push yourself and be tough especially if you’re on this team you have to be a fighter," Liufao said. "You’ve just got to get up and keep going."
With back-to-back wins under their belts, the Sun Devils have already refocused on its next test: next Saturday against No. 5 Utah at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
"Moving onto next week already our mentality is to enjoy the win for 15 minutes, and already our mentality is to go 1-0 against Utah," Bercovici said. We’re focused on that right now.”
Reach the reporter at mtonis@asu.edu or follow @Tonis_The_Tiger on Twitter.
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