* One of Mike Leach’s coaching admonitions was to “be the most excited team to play on Saturday.” Enthusiasm, in other words, leads to better play and better play leads to wins. Arizona State was clearly the more enthusiastic team on Saturday, October 18. Their body language was better, their excitement was more evident, they were more alert, especially on defense, and they played faster. These are the intangibles we hear about all the time, and they arguably made all the difference in the outcome of this contest.
* Early in the game Texas Tech’s pass rush was much more effective than it was later. The fatigue factor was part of this phenomenon, but there was something else. Specifically, the defense did an excellent job early of taking away Sam Leavitt’s first read and forcing him to hang onto the ball an extra beat, which allowed David Bailey and others to get home with some frequency. But the Sun Devils adjusted. They began running max protection, abandoned the short hot routes, and began chucking it deep against a Tech defense that was running some cover one. And boy did it pay off. Texas Tech showed a bit of vulnerability to deep shots earlier in the season and ASU exploited it. Teams will continue doing this to the Red Raiders until they show the ability to clamp it off.
* Coaches are notoriously chary of making personnel changes. They fear–probably with some justification–the possibility of generating negative emotional dynamics in the locker room. If a coach demotes a player that player may become angry and begin spreading poison in the locker room as a way of getting back at the coach who bruised his ego. So, rather than do what should be done, they simply swallow subpar play from individual players as a tradeoff for locker room harmony…