Jordan Hamm
There’s a lot of similarities between Arizona State and Texas State as the two prepare to square off on Thursday in San Marcos.
Both teams are led by young, up-and-coming coaches, and each respective team is hoping to ride the early season momentum. For Texas State, it’s a new territory as the program is coming off their first bowl game last year and an 8-5 record in G.J. Kinne’s debut season.
The Sun Devils are turning the ship around. There’s no more talk of NCAA sanctions, of players leaving en masse. They’ve impressed early on in Kenny Dillingham’s second year, going 2-0 against Wyoming and Mississippi State, the program’s first win over a SEC program. The foundation is laid, progress is happening.
There’s a mutual respect between the coaches, who have been linked to some of the same mentors and go about running their programs in similar ways.
When Kinne played for three years at Tulsa, Mike Norvell was on the staff. Dillingham worked with Norvell as a grad assistant at Arizona State. He then worked his way up the ranks on Norvell’s staffs at Memphis and Florida State.
Dillingham was Gus Malzahn’s offensive coordinator at Auburn. Kinne was the co-offensive coordinator for him at UCF in 2021.
Don’t let the Group of 5 status fool you, Texas State presents a lot of challenges on a short week that Dillingham is trying to prepare for.
“This is the best football team we’ve played,” Dillingham said of Texas State. “These guys play hard. They play hard. You watch the tape, these guys play with passion. They play with a chip (on their shoulder). They’re explosive. They’re really good with the ball in their hand. We have to be fresh. We have to be healthy. We have to be fundamentally sound.”
Kinne knows this is an important game that could set Arizona State up for a far easier path to bowl eligibility. It also could help enhance Arizona State’s already-impressive recruiting prowess in the state of Texas.
“They recruit Texas like their hair is on first,” Kinne said.
Cam Skattebo Recruitment
Another similarity Dillingham and Kinne share is they both pursued running back Cam Skattebo in the transfer portal ahead of the 2023 season. Kinne, who was the head coach of Incarnate Word in 2022, was on the wrong end of a classic Skattebo game when he played for Sacramento State: 177 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns. The running back also threw a 19-yard touchdown.
While Dillingham and Beau Baldwin won out on that one, Kinne tried to get Skattebo to Texas State, claiming he must have been the first offer when the running back entered the portal.
Youth vs Experience at QB
Sam Leavitt will start his first game on the road on Thursday and just his third overall. The redshift freshman threw two touchdowns in his debut against Wyoming and rushed for a score against Mississippi State. The passing game struggled to find a rhythm against the Bulldogs, and Leavitt threw for just 69 yards. Dillingham has been quick to point out the reliance on Cam Skattebo, who averaged nearly eight yards a carry last Saturday, came at the cost of getting Leavitt in a rhythm, specifically in the second half.
“I can sleep really well at night if our quarterback is missing a few throws,” Dillingham said. “I can’t sleep if he is throwing to the wrong person, if he’s turning the football over, if he’s panicking when guys are aligned wrong or running back goes the wrong way on the goal line. He doesn’t do any of that.”
Leavitt has yet to turn the ball over, which was also a rarity in fall camp as well.
Kinne said Leavitt will be the best quarterback Texas State will face, and is mindful of the Sun Devil ground attack.
“Why throw when you can run it?”
On the other end of the spectrum is Jordan McCloud, who has been in college football since 2019. He’s in his first year with Texas State but has also played at South Florida, Arizona and James Madison. He was with Arizona during the Wildcats’ (very) rough 2021 season where they went 1-11. A big chunk of that was due to injury, but when McCloud got his chance, the offense effectively moved the ball.
With James Madison, he scored 43 total touchdowns to 10 interceptions on the year and was a top QB option in the protal. He’s thrown for 527 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions in two games this year.
He’s seen it all through his time in college football, and Dillingham hopes to create an environment where the pre-snap defense always looks the same, but defense that comes out of it looks very different snap-to-snap.
“We can’t give him any tips because he’s seen too much.”
There’s plenty of connections and similarities between these two programs. Thursday also won’t be your typical mismatch between a Power-4 program and a “small school.”
Prepare for some fireworks.
