Bordow: With Georgia on mind, ASU falls in trap

How good are the Georgia Bulldogs? They didn’t even have to show up in Tempe and they beat Arizona State. How else to explain ASU’s shocking, inexplicable, that-couldn’t-have-happened 23-20 overtime loss to UNLV Saturday?

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Read Scott Bordow's blog

The Sun Devils insisted all week they weren’t overlooking the Rebels and taking a sneak peek at the Georgia game, to a national television audience, to the ESPN “College GameDay” crew coming to town.

Now we know better.

ASU fell into the trap. It looked ahead and never saw what was coming up behind it.

“It was a nightmare,” coach Dennis Erickson said. … “It’s sickening. It starts with me. I didn’t have them ready to play. I’ll take the blame.”

Erickson does have to shoulder responsibility. One of his supposed strengths is that his teams win when they’re supposed to.

But ASU looked like it was bored Saturday. There was no juice, no sense of excitement on the field or, to be honest, in the stands at Sun Devil Stadium.

Clearly, ASU — and its fans — had Georgia on its mind.

“We practiced fine,” quarterback Rudy Carpenter said.

Sorry, but a focused team doesn’t get outscored 10-0 in the fourth quarter by a Mountain West club.

A focused team doesn’t let UNLV control the ball for nearly 20 minutes in the second half.

A focused team makes third-down stops, punishes an inferior foe and doesn’t get a potential game-tying field blocked in overtime.

C’mon, this wasn’t USC the Devils were playing. Or even California. If ASU was anywhere near its best, it would have wiped UNLV off the field.

“They’re not on our level,” safety Troy Nolan said. “We let them hang around and look what happened. They beat us.”

So much was lost Saturday.

ASU likely will fall out of the top 25. Its game against Georgia suddenly isn’t the marquee matchup on the college football calendar next weekend. More tangibly, the Rebels exposed the Sun Devils.

UNLV wore down ASU’s defense in the second half. The Rebels had one 18-play scoring drive that took more than nine minutes off the clock, and they were 4 of 7 on third-down conversions in the fourth quarter.

Total time of possession: UNLV 32:32; ASU 27:28.

If UNLV, which isn’t one of the elite teams in the Mountain West Conference, could control the line of scrimmage, what kind of numbers are running back Knowshon Moreno and Georgia going to put up in six days?

“We didn’t make any plays on defense,” Erickson said. “We didn’t tackle well.”

ASU’s loss ended what has to be the worst weekend in the 30-year history of the Pac-10.

Four teams — ASU, UCLA, Arizona and Stanford — lost to Mountain West clubs.

Washington State and Washington were outscored by a combined 100-31.

California was manhandled by Maryland, which lost to Middle Tennessee State a week earlier.

Thank goodness for USC, which dominated Ohio State and has so much NFL talent on its roster it should be playing on Sunday.

Some of the losses were understandable. UCLA isn’t as good as BYU, although 59-0 is a bit much. Arizona’s young defense, playing on the road for the first time, fell apart against New Mexico.

But ASU? At home? Against UNLV?

Never in a million years.

“I have to give unbelievable credit to our team,” said a crying UNLV coach Mike Sanford.

The Rebels deserve all the kind words. They scored 10 points in the final 6:28 of the fourth quarter, making every play when they had to.

ASU, on the other hand, never seemed to sense any danger until it was too late, when Thomas Weber’s 35-yard field-goal attempt was stuffed in the first overtime.

As the Rebels sprinted onto the field and began to celebrate, several Sun Devils angrily tossed their helmets.

If only they had shown such emotion during the game.