Of all the one loss teams in the nation, the college football world is just now starting to talk about Arizona State. Notre Dame is well aware of how good they are. It took their best shot to beat the Sun Devils in Dallas a year ago. That was a great game that could have gone either way. From there Arizona State didn't lose again in the regular season. They won the PAC 12 South before running into a road block at Stanford in the PAC 12 Championship.
Arizona State picked up right where they left off this year and are among the 12 teams in the Top 25 with just one loss along with Notre Dame. They have a very potent offense led by Senior quarterback Taylor Kelly. He has 1010 yards with 9 touchdowns and only 2 interceptions. Considering he missed 3 games with a leg injury that is good. Junior back up Mike Bercovici was solid in those three games with 1322 yards with 10 touchdowns and only 3 interceptions. It doesn't matter who is in at quarterback, this offense is good.
They have two really good weapons. Junior runner D.J. Foster has 701 yards with 6 touchdowns. He is also a factor in the passing game with 452 receiving yards and 2 touchdowns. The leading receiver is Junior Jaelen Strong with 57 catches for 821 yards and 8 touchdowns.
The Sun Devil defense, like Notre Dame, has had it's ups and downs this season. In the first 5 games they were giving up an average of 31.4 points. They had one really bad game against UCLA in which they gave up 62 points and 580 total yards. But they have improved the last 3 games by giving up just 13 a game.
They have had only one common opponent with Notre Dame in Stanford. While the Irish had the late conversion to pull out a last minute win, the Sun Devils beat the Cardinal convincinly 26-10.
This is probably the best opponent left on Notre Dame's schedule and probably our last chance to get what the playoff committee will consider a quality win. Let's hope they have a really good week of practice.
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