What Kenny Dillingham said about Arizona State's Peach Bowl matchup vs. Texas
Arizona State has been here before.
Picked to finish last in the Big 12 with incredibly long odds to even qualify for a bowl game, Kenny Dillingham's football team stunned the college football world by winning the Big 12 and earning a berth in the College Football Playoff.
Consider the oddsmakers unimpressed.
The Sun Devils (11-2) enter their CFP quarterfinal game against Texas (11-2) as 13.5-point underdogs — by far the biggest point spread of the four quarterfinal matchups.
Arizona State has played with a chip on its shoulder all season, and at this point it's the size of Tempe.
"I think any competitor, regardless of what you do, you want a chance to compete versus the very best, and if you don’t want to do that, then you’re not a competitor. I think that’s what our guys are excited for is that opportunity," Dillingham said during Monday's Peach Bowl press conference.
"I’m excited to see our guys get out there and be able to do just that. We’re 14-point underdogs, and rightfully so. We’re playing a really good football team. But at the same token, I’m excited to see our guys go compete as hard as they can compete for as long as they can compete, play smart and tough football, take care of the ball and be about the team for 60 minutes and see what happens.”
Here's more of what Dillingham said about Arizona State's Peach Bowl matchup with Texas:
Dillingham On His Respect For Texas
"Our staff, our offensive coordinator and coach [Steve] Sarkisian have a great relationship, and there’s a lot of similarities that they do offensively ... I just have a lot of respect for their football program. When you watch football teams and you see teams that are very creative but also simple, you have a lot of respect for that, and their guys play extremely hard. They have extremely good players that play extremely hard, which is not fun to play. You would like extremely good players to not play hard, but they have the combination of their players are very good and they play hard. They’re very fundamentally sound across the board. This is going to be, like I told our guys [Monday] morning, this is going to be a great challenge for us to compete versus a team that has spent four years preparing to compete for a national championship."
Dillingham On Recruiting Texas Players
"We knew we were joining the Big 12, and we had a strategy as a staff when we were joining the Big 12 that we were going to play games in Texas, so we wanted to recruit Texas at a higher rate, and we felt like where we were as a program kind of being in between Hawai’i, Utah, Southern California and then Texas, that within two hours a kid from Dallas or Houston can fly to us and that would kind of be our niche is be a school that recruits both California, Utah, Hawai’i and also have a big state in Texas.
"That was kind of our plan all along. And I will say this, the guys we’ve gotten from Texas and coach Sark’s program have been unbelievable. That may be why we’re going back — we’ve gone back to the well when some of their guys have hit the portal — is we know what we’re getting when we’re getting a guy from that program, and that’s a guy who has worked really hard, competed and been pushed. Those are the things that we like to bring in.”
Dillingham On The Differences Between The Big 12 And Pac-12
“I think one of the challenges were the environments. We were not used to getting tortillas thrown at us at Texas Tech. You’re not used to some of these environments. When you’re in the Pac-12 you’re playing in Seattle, you’re playing in LA, you’re playing in Salt Lake City, you’re playing in different environments. We got to face a lot more small college town football with really, really great environments.
"It was definitely fun to join a new league, a league as passionate as the Big 12 is for football, a league whose roots are in the state of Texas, which everybody knows Texas high school football is some of the best high school football in the country. And to be able to create a footprint in the state or try to create a footprint as much as we can in the state, is something that I truly believe in.”
Dillingham On Getting The Ball To Cam Skattebo
"Obviously we’ve got to get Cam going in some way, shape or form. Everybody knows that. You’ve got to get your best players the ball. They know that. It’s not a secret. They do such a good job being fundamentally sound and just defeating blocks. That’s going to be a great challenge for us and our offensive staff is creating angles, creating leverage to give our guys an advantage to get Cam started and at least get him to second and third levels of players where he can win one-on-ones and not getting stuck at the line of scrimmage."
"But they do such a good job fundamentally moving d-linemen around. Not big tweaks, but minor tweaks throughout a game plan to take advantage of your running game. And like I said, I think that’s why they do a good job defensively is small changes are what good coordinators do, not big changes. And they’re a team that’s filled with small changes within a game plan. We’ve got to find ways to get into the second and third level. It’s going to be a great challenge.”
Arizona State and Texas will play at 11 a.m. MST on New Year's Day. The winner will face the winner of Ohio State vs. Oregon in the CFP semifinals.
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Ben Sherman has been covering the sports world for most of his journalism career, including 17 years with The Oregonian/OregonLive. One of his favorite memories was covering the 1999 Fiesta Bowl - the first BCS National Championship Game - at Sun Devil Stadium.