What Kenny Dillingham said about Arizona State’s rivalry game vs. Arizona

And they remember that feeling.

“We got our ass kicked last year and got embarrassed, so it’s a game that matters,” Dillingham said during his Monday press conference. “If you weren’t here, the other guys on our team were embarrassed, I was embarrassed, so you better have a little bit of yourself when somebody embarrasses you like that. They have the same quarterback who returns the same wide receiver. They have a lot of the same players coming back from that football team from a team that tore us apart.”

The tables are turned this season. Arizona State (9-2) enters Saturday’s game in Tucson needing a win to clinch a spot in the Big 12 football championship game. Arizona (4-7) is playing for pride in year one under Brent Brennan.

Here are the highlights from Dillingham’s press conference ahead of the Arizona game:

Dillingham on ASU’s approach to the Arizona game

“It’s about us going and playing and preparing the way we do. Like I’ve said to the team since I think week three, every game you win makes the next game the most important game. And yeah more times you win, the next game is more important It doesn’t matter who you play, it doesn’t matter where you play It’s the most important game because you won the last straight game This is the most important game on our schedule because we put ourselves able to it matters not just from a rivalry perspective, but from a larger perspective of achieving other aspirations.”

Dillingham on a failed 4th down vs. BYU

“Cam went the wrong way … We were in a jam for three minutes there … should we call it, should we call it, we’re going to call it, we’re going to call it, I think I confused our guys a little bit in that scenario. And when you don’t have everybody doing the same thing, everybody’s not on the same page of coaching. It’s our job to make sure we didn’t execute it badly, but like I said, we’re never going to execute a piece. bad so i have to to do a better job doing a better job coming off the sidelines and making sure we’re on the same page I mean it’s fourth and one we can’t be on the same page and it starts and ends with me.

Dillingham on ASU’s second-half struggles

“I brought it up with the team today because I think when we play with a chip on our shoulder, we play really hard. I think sometimes when we think we’re ready to beat somebody out and they beat us back, well we thought it was just going to keep going this incredible way and then they get us against the ropes and we’ve been fighting to come back, but we’ve had two opportunities in two weeks in a row with three possessions with the ball in the middle of the third quarter. We fumbled one, we lost the ball in another, and we’re as close as we’ve given up two 90-plus yard drives in the second half in quick time.”

Dillingham about putting teams away

“We’ve got to find a way that looks like winning on the road. How do we find a way to put a team away? We didn’t put Mississippi State away when we could. We’ve had opportunities to put teams away. , and we’re just trying to figure out how to do it. I know it’s kind of weird because we’re still in year two and there’s still a lot of things we’re learning how to do. We are learning to win on the road, which we still haven’t learned to close out, or really step on an opponent when we’ve got some momentum in the second half of the games. We’ve learned to fight back if we get hit in the face early, but we have not learned to fight back if we get punched in the face right after we’ve been successful.”

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