Arizona State football is prepping for its first away match-up against Cal on Saturday and are coming off an encouraging effort against No. 5 USC.
On Monday, head coach Kenny Dillingham met with media to discuss his final takeaways from Saturday’s 42-28 loss to the Trojans. A big change from Saturday was Dillingham taking over play-calling duties from offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin. While the Sun Devils were effective on both sides of the ball, CKD believes the execution has a lot of progress ahead of it.
There’s a balance coaches have to walk between seeing improvement even when it doesn’t impact the win column. Dillingham has used the banzai tree analogy before: the tree has to be watered and watered and watered to no change. Then, the tree sprouts and grows immensely. Like the banzai tree, this new era of Sun Devil football needs to set its roots.
So can the head coach be happy about a loss to USC? Not exactly in the moment, but he can look to the positives and see the improvements week-over-week.
Finally, Cameron Skattebo had a career night on Saturday, tallying 190 all-purpose yards, two touchdowns, 42 passing yards and a 50-yard punt. What was the difference in Skattebo and the offensive line on Saturday that made them so effective? I’ll let Coach explain:
ASU and Cal kick off in Berkley on Saturday at 12 PM.
Jordan Hamm
