Nov. 15, 2008
Final Stats | Quotes | Notes | Game Action
TEMPE, Ariz. - By Matt Storey, ASU Media Relations
A dominating defensive effort lifted the Arizona State football team to a 31-0 victory over Washington State in Saturday's Homecoming game. The win is the second straight for the Sun Devils, and it improves them to 4-6, 3-4 in the Pac-10, on the season.
ASU's defense allowed just 130 yards of offense in the team's first shutout since a 1996 victory over No. 1 Nebraska.
"It was an unbelievable defensive effort," head coach Dennis Erickson said. "Anytime you shut out anybody, it's special. The defense played great all day."
The defense also forced two Washington State turnovers, as Mike Nixon had his team-leading fourth interception and freshman Lawrence Guy recovered a fumble and ran it back for a touchdown in the fourth quarter. It marked the third straight game ASU scored a defensive touchdown.
Offensively, quarterback Rudy Carpenter finished 17-of-25 for 213 yards and three touchdowns. That gave him 80 career touchdown passes, the third-most in Pac-10 history behind only USC's Matt Leinart and former Sun Devil Andrew Walter.
Two of Carpenter's scoring passes went to Kyle Williams, who had his first career multi-touchdown game in the win. Both came in the third quarter, the first from 21 yards and the second on a 51-yard deep ball.
"On the first one, Rudy scrambled and made a nice play, and I had just had to do the running yards," Williams said. "But it was all about him putting the ball in the right spot for me to make a play. The second one was just a good throw by Rudy. I just had to run a straight line, and he put it there. You can't really ask for anything more."
Williams led all receivers with 72 yards on his two catches. Chris McGaha and Kerry Taylor had three receptions each, and Taylor also had a touchdown catch. In all, 11 different Sun Devils caught passes in the game.
Four ASU running backs had 30 yards or more on the ground, with Dimitri Nance leading the way with 47 yards on nine carries, all in the second half.
"I thought Dimitri came in and sparked us," Erickson said. "It didn't seem like we were breaking tackles in the first half, so we decided to put him in and see what he could do. I think he sparked things with some of those runs he made."
The Sun Devil offense struggled early, as they had to punt on three of their first four drives with only a Thomas Weber field goal giving ASU a 3-0 lead.
The offense gained some traction in the second quarter, going on a 12-play, 73-yard drive that ended with a 14-yard touchdown pass from Carpenter to Taylor. Still, the Devils led only 10-0 at the half.
"We played terrible in the first half," Carpenter said of the offense. "We've just struggled with consistency and finding our rhythm at certain points in the season, and that's kind of what happened in the first half. Coach [Erickson] made good adjustments at halftime and got us in some positions to make some big plays."
ASU scored on its first drive of the third quarter on Carpenter's 21-yard touchdown pass to Williams, and then two possessions later, Carpenter connected with Williams again for a 51-yard score.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Washington State went for it on 4th-and-1, but Luis Vasquez sacked Cougar quarterback J.T. Levenseller and forced a fumble. Guy eventually scooped the ball up and took it back 22 yards for a touchdown to complete the scoring in the game.
"I think for us, it's a very big deal," Carpenter said of the importance of this win. "At this point, we're going to take wins any way we can get them. We have two tough games coming up, so we're playing to get into a bowl game, hopefully. It's good that we're back in the win column."
The Sun Devils now have a bye week before hosting UCLA on Nov. 28 at 7:30 p.m.