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Preliminary Thoughts: ASU

By David Piper

You guys know that I've been on the ASU bandwagon all season.  As soon as they hired Dennis Erickson, I knew they'd be good.  This good?  I'm not sure we knew that.  But good.  And anyone who thinks that this is going to be some kind of rout has another thing coming.  This game is going to be a dogfight.  A look at the most key stats shows that things are pretty damn even in a lot of areas (all stats from Pac-10.org):


Scoring Offense:

  1. Oregon 43.8

  2. ASU 36.9
Scoring Defense:

  1. ASU 15.6

  2. Oregon 21.9
Turnover Ratio:

  1. ASU +7

  2. Oregon +6

That's about as even a matchup as you can get.  ASU's defense a bit better, Oregon's offense a bit better, but even in a lot of ways.  To find a winner, you have to look at little things that might work in a team's favor.  I have three for Oregon:

  1.  Autzen.  ASU hasn't played in that kind of an environment all year long
  2.  Dixon.  He's mobile and can make plays with his feet.  Rudy Carperter is not.
  3.  Penalties.  Oregon is the second least penalized team in the conference.  Arizona State is the second worst.
Obviously, we'll have more later in the week as we really start to break this thing down, but these could be a few things that break our way come Saturday.

GO DUCKS!!!

--Dave

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