ASU struggling for answers after blowout

Over the last two decades, dreadful home defeats against Oregon have been cause for soul-searching in Arizona State's football program.

Bordow: Whats wrong with ASU?

Then-coach Larry Marmie declared that ASU was at an “all-time low” after a 20-point loss to the Ducks dropped the Sun Devils to 3-3-1 in 1989. A two-overtime setback in 2000 started a late-season spiral that cost coach Bruce Snyder his job. Two years ago, players questioned their intensity and preparation after a 48-13 Oregon win.

Here are the Sun Devils again, looking for answers after suffering their fifth straight loss in the ugliest of fashions, a 54-20 blowout at the hands of the Ducks in Tempe.

“When things aren’t going well, there’s only one thing to do,” coach Dennis Erickson said on Sunday. “Well, I guess there are a lot of things you can do, but there is only one way to fight through it. You keep practicing hard and get ready for every game, and eventually, things will happen.

“That’s the only way I’ve ever prepared for it, and that’s the only way our players have.”

An ASU team that was picked to finish second in the Pac-10 and ranked 15th in the preseason Associated Press poll is fighting for postseason eligibility. The Sun Devils must win four of their remaining five games to earn a bowl trip, and the 15 extra practices that go with it.

Those additional workouts would be valuable to a team that has played a school-record 10 true freshmen and has one of the smaller senior classes in the nation. ASU has 15 seniors.

Second-ranked Alabama has nine seniors, tied with Middle Tennessee State for the least in the bowl subdivision. Among other schools, Arizona, Minnesota and North Carolina have 11 seniors, Fresno State 12 and Oklahoma State and Notre Dame 15.

“We are known as playmakers, all our skill-position players,” senior wide receiver Michael Jones said. “When your number is called, you need to step up and make a play like you are supposed to.”

It has been suggested — although not by Erickson, who has often said that former coach Dirk Koetter “did not leave the cupboard bare” — that a dearth of talent from the 2004-06 recruiting classes has sapped the Sun Devils’ depth and experience.

A look at those classes:

• Of the 17 scholarship players who arrived at ASU out of high school in 2004, six remain, and five — Jones, quarterback Rudy Carpenter, tight ends Andrew Pettes and Wes Evans and defensive tackle David Smith — started on Saturday. Another starter, guard Paul Fanaika, was a walk-on in ’04.

The damaging facet of the 2004 class is that none of the four offensive linemen signed remain on the roster.

• ASU’s 2005 class was rated 32nd in the nation by Rivals.com, 41st by Scout.com. Ten of the 16 players signed out of high school are still with the team, including five starters.

• Eight of the 14 freshmen in the 2006 class — rated 28th by Rivals, 32nd by Scout — remain in Tempe, including four starters. Not included in that number is first-string weak-side linebacker Mike Nixon, who walked on after playing minor-league baseball.

Among the schools with recruiting classes rated behind ASU’s from 2004-06 are Brigham Young, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Oregon, Texas Tech and Utah.

Nobody is claiming that the Sun Devils possess national championship-level talent. But they do not have 2-5 talent, either.

“We’re better than what we’re playing, there’s no question about that,” Erickson said. “We shouldn’t be 2-5. But the bottom line for us is that people can talk about talent and all that stuff, but we should be better. As I say that, though, we’d better start doing it. It means working hard and getting ready for the five football games we have left.”