Welcome to Georgia, Sun Devils!

I certainly hope all of the Arizona State fans enjoy their visit to the University of Georgia, except for one aspect of the trip – that being the game. I’ll leave the “Devil went down to Georgia” fodder for others.

What worries me is that the Sun Devils are coming in way under the proverbial radar. No one really expects them to come to our stadium and go home with a win. NO ONE! I know UGA supposedly plays better as the under “dawg” but I am hoping our guys have not gotten the message that this Arizona State team is not up to their own standard. We need to play sound football on both sides of the ball and try to achieve some semblance of a balanced football team. Teams with all offense or all defense rarely win many games in the SEC.

I have given up on the precise predictions as I am typically not even close, score-wise. I might get a few prognostications with regard to plays or players close to reality, but my scoring has been abysmal, so no more of those.

I think we come into this game a little flat, honestly. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took the early lead (imagine that). The Dawgs have played in two very close, very long shootouts back-to-back, and their legs and minds are bound to be tired. My hope is that our defense will have something to prove in this game and get after Arizona State early and often. I also hope that we establish our running game and get that settled so we can begin to find our groove there before we get into the meat of our schedule. Caleb King showed better vision and balance than Richard Samuel did last week. This is probably because Caleb is a more “natural” running back, whereas Richard is more an athlete who can really run. Richard is a “downhill” runner as was shown on his 80 yard TD run. He hit that hole quickly and was gone. I hope we run more between the tackles with Richard and Caleb, and allow Carlton Thomas to get into space more. The little fella has a lot of heart, but he doesn’t have a lot of mass to justify running him into players twice his size. We’d do well to get him out on screens and sweeps and let him create.

On defense, I hope we become smarter with our recognitions and disciplined with our assignments. There were times last week when the coverage was there, but Mallett and his WR corps were just on their game. Of course, there were a couple of times where we just looked clueless. Here’s an idea; let’s get lined up before the other team gets to the line of scrimmage so we are not at “...set” (as in dowwwwwwn, ...set...hut) before we get where we are supposed to be. And another thing, let’s cover their players and not cover each other (Vance Cuff and Reshad Jones...). It’s not likely the opposing QB is going to choose one of our players to try and complete a pass to. Just a guess on my part, really.

There’s no logical reason that we should lose this game. That being said, logic is typically not a factor in college football, these days. We have the better players, and we are at home to a (hopefully) loud crowd. We can show them a little southern hospitality before and after the game, but let’s show them a lot of southern football between the hedges.

No score, but UGA by 17 points.