Arizona State runs through Colorado
Demario Richard ran for 189 yards and a touchdown, helping Arizona State power past Colorado 41-30 Saturday night for the Sun Devils’ 600th win as a program.
Arizona State (5-4, 4-2 Pac-12) trailed by 10 in the third quarter, but turned to its power-running game to bull through the Buffaloes (5-5, 2-5). The Sun Devils had 274 of their 381 rushing yards in the second half and finished with 583 total yards.
Arizona State’s Manny Wilkins threw for 202 yards and a pair of scores, adding 95 yards and a touchdown rushing. The Sun Devils also kept Colorado’s Phillip Lindsay in check for most of the night, holding the nation’s third-leading rusher to 80 yards on 23 carries with two touchdowns.
Steven Montez threw for 345 yards and a touchdown, but the Buffaloes were plagued by multiple dropped passes, including one by Shay Fields that would have been a sure touchdown — he was 15 yards behind the Sun Devils — on a trick play.
Arizona State thought its defensive deficiencies were straightened out with impressive wins over Washington and Utah in consecutive weeks.
The Sun Devils regressed last week against No. 17 Southern Cal, allowing the Trojans to pile up 607 yards through a slew of big plays and missed tackles by ASU.
Now they had to stop Lindsay, the final of the nation’s top 3 rushers to face Arizona State this season.
The Sun Devils didn’t fare so well against the other two, allowing Stanford’s Bryce Love to run for 307 yards and San Diego State’s Rashaad Penny to pick up 216.
They did a good job of preventing Lindsay from breaking off any big runs in the first half, but allowed Montez to hurt them with the passing game to set up Lindsay for scoring runs of 1 and 6 yards .
Washington 38, Oregon 3: Dante Pettis became the NCAA’s career leader in punt return touchdowns and had a 47-yard TD reception, helping No. 12 Washington beat Oregon on Saturday night.
A year after breaking a 12game losing streak to the Ducks, Washington (8-1, 5-1 Pac-12, No. 12 CFP) kept alive its hopes for a return to the College Football Playoff by thumping its rival to the south.
Pettis sparked Washington’s blowout on a frigid, wet night along the shore of Lake Washington. After a sluggish start, Pettis’ ninth career punt return touchdown started an avalanche of Washington points.
Pettis caught the line drive punt from Oregon’s Adam Stack, made the initial defenders miss, hurdled an attempted tackle from Stack at the Oregon 40 and found open space as he sprinted to the end zone. The 64-yard play was the fourth punt return for a score
this season by Pettis, tying a Pac-12 record. He had punt return touchdowns in three straight games in September to pull even with Antonio Perkins (Oklahoma) and Wes Welker (Texas Tech) on the NCAA list.
“Punt returns for touchdowns are rare ... and I already had three this year so it wasn’t like, ‘I haven’t got a punt return in a long time,” ’ Pettis said. “Each week I was going into it and just trying to get the best return that I could.”