Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham
 

On the fast start on both sides of the ball against Kansas State:

“I think our guys were just dialed in, and then we made a great play. It's amazing what momentum does when you make a great play, the second play of the game and the rest was history. So, that was a game-changing play, just from the momentum perspective. And the best thing that we did was that next drive, we held them on third-and-1, held them on fourth-and-1, and then we went down to score again and got up 14 points. And that was where we were actually lacking. We weren't necessarily starting slow in games. It was that middle portion and we cleaned that up in this game.”

On Ben Coleman’s status for next year:
“He's got another year. That's a conversation that we're going to have to have. I actually have a meeting with the leadership council. We're going to talk about Senior Day. Obviously, the game is so much different now with how many years of eligibility people have. You know, what is this day? Is this a senior in school? Is this existing eligibility? Is this existing eligibility and not returning? At this stage, you should have a pretty good clue what you want to do. So I do think I want to prevent somebody from walking on senior day and then all of a sudden coming back and walking another senior day. It's like, no, that should be a moment. That's your last time on that field. You should know when you enter the stadium, ‘This is the last time that I'm ever going to have a helmet on in this stadium.’ And I want to keep that. So we're going to navigate that with the leadership council here this afternoon and figure out how we want to manage that.”

On whether he saw this season’s success coming:
“I mean to say I saw us being at 8-2 and say, ‘Oh, this is what I expected.’ You always expect to win. I don't know how to explain it. I don't look at the macro very much of ‘how many wins are you going to achieve?’ It's so hard because it's one play away, we’re four plays away from having four losses and we're a couple of plays away from having 10 wins. That's the nature of football, so I've never looked at it like that. I always look at it like we can win every game on our schedule... So when I noticed it was the Mississippi State game, the first half of that game, when we came out and we were physical, we played hard, we played with passion and then just the guys’ camaraderie throughout it was when I was like, ‘Ok, these guys, they got something to them.’ And I always knew that, but it was when you see it live in a game setting, it kind of confirmed that we got something about ourselves.”

On getting national recognition and being ranked
“I'm making a huge cut-up of all the great things being said about us. I really am and showing it to the team. So that's what I'm telling them, ‘We made it. You guys have accomplished it. You guys did what you wanted to do. Here are all the awesome things being said and, we still have a football game to play.’ I mean, it’s just so comical to me. Like, I couldn't care less. It's just comedy. The only thing it's positive for is recruiting. That's real. There's like a 1,000 person wait line for (student) tickets. That should be every single game because it's going to be fun now. Like for us, it's going to be miserable still. Every game day is miserable for me. But not unless you win. But, it's the process for the Valley to be able to experience what they get to experience, which is an unbelievable college football environment on Saturday, is what we need to get people bought back into here. That there's nothing that can replicate it. So this is going to be that entry game. We haven't had one like this yet since I've been here. This is going to be the game where people can really feel it.”

On the importance of playing No. 14 BYU as a newly-ranked team:
“It's huge. I mean, they're ranked above us and they have one loss in the football season. They're very close to being undefeated in the season and that's a great challenge for our guys. Especially at home. Especially when we're coming off an emotional win. They're coming off an emotional loss. We both somewhat control our own destiny. So, which team should actually have a little bit more vinegar in them? Probably the team that just came off something negative. Not the team that's being told how great we are. It's the team that's being questioned right now. So they definitely have an advantage when it comes to mindset based off of the last week's game. They're going to come into this game, like it's the Super Bowl, which it is. It's the same value for both sides, but they're going to come into this thing with a really good football coach and a really good team expecting to win and playing with a little bit of something extra.”

On lineman Leif Fautanu’s impact on the team:
“His consistency is remarkable. He's the same person every single day. He shows up, he works really hard, he’s a really good person, makes good decisions on and off the field. He loves football. He has a lot of fun … and he's everything the program wants to be about. It's just awesome to see him and he's going to have a very successful life in whatever he chooses to do.”

On quarterback Sam Leavitt mindset against BYU having relatives that went there:
“Sam's emotionally involved every game. He's super competitive. You guys saw the videos after the games of him screaming, jumping around. I'm just glad he's not trying to run people over anymore. But that's who Sam is. That's what makes him different. He's just so passionate about the game that I don't know if he can raise his passion level. It's already at the tip top. I don't know if he has a higher level. Maybe he does, but it’d be a shock to me because he always plays this game with an unbelievable passion and care. So not much to talk about from that perspective, just another football game, one game at a time, go take care of business, go play as hard as you can and try to win.”

On weekly conference awards:
"It's amazing that you get selfish awards when teams win. We talk about that all the time. People get drafted when you're on a winning team, you get awards when you're on a winning team. You don't get those things right when you're on a losing team. So in order to be selfish, you actually have to sacrifice for the good of the team. If you don't make the sacrifices to make the team good, then you're never going to reap the individual rewards you deserve. I think that’s a testament that our guys have really bought into the team mentality. And then you see guys getting individual rewards for that team mentality because nobody's out there playing this game selfishly right now on our football team. Did Jordyn (Tyson) have an incredible night? Yes, he did. And he deserves all the awards he deserves. But if you asked Jordyn (Tyson), he'd give away the award to make sure he won the football game. That's kind of the mindset of our football team."

On BYU's head coach Kalani Sitake:
"He’s one of the best defensive minds in football. I've played him multiple times. He’s a phenomenal defensive coach. He's definitely in the top three of his best people in the profession from a head coaching coaching perspective. You would want to have your child play for him. He's just an unbelievable person. You can just see his energy with the players, his connection with the players. That's why they play really hard for him and they play extremely hard. This team plays hard and physical, because the connection that you can see that he builds. He's a phenomenal football coach. He's done an incredible job there. He's doing an incredible job this year. Like I said, I truly think it's because, one, he's a phenomenal football coach and defensive mind and two, I think those guys really believe in him and really want to play for him. When he says something, they listen and they believe it and then they go and try to achieve it."

On the outside noise and BYU's offense:
"I don't really worry about people criticizing people. We were told last week we didn't play anybody and we sucked. If you listen to what other people's perspectives of teams are, you're going to get lost in the stuff that doesn't matter. What matters is their football team has one loss. They find ways to win. Their quarterback extends plays. He makes plays in big moments of the games. He's hard and slippery to get down. They run the football really well. They've been really efficient and then they're really good in the turnover margin. So in terms of their offense, they actually run a lot of the things we run. There's actually a ton of similarities schematically what they do on offense and what we do on offense. I think the scheme is good. I think the players are good and there's a reason they were undefeated until last week and it's hard to go undefeated in college football. There's a reason they're ranked above us right now and that's not an accident."

On the noise from the media: 
"I just play off of it. I really don't care. It really doesn't matter to me at all. The guys are 18 to 22 years old. If you think these guys aren't on social media, you're living under a rock, that's all they do. You get on the bus and everybody's reading every nice tweet or bad tweet about us. They definitely were had a little bit of extra energy because of that. You can kind of feel it."

On contract negotiations:
"I personally, I am not, I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about our assistants right now. I'm worried about our players in NIL. I'm worried about everybody else, especially within the program, that's making us successful right now."

On Big 12 tiebreakers:
"I have no clue. Somebody was telling me if we win and somebody else loses and then like ranch dressing falls on a wing and I don't really know. Just play the very best you can play, prepare the very best you can prepare. I told you guys last week in another leadership council meeting, “don't get lost in the sauce.” Just be the very best we can be over and over again. Wherever we end up is the best we could have ever done, that's it. You can wish and hope but if you just play the very best you can play and prepare the very best you can prepare, then regardless of what happens, it's the very maximum you could have ever achieved anyways. So what else could you want? So I have no clue, some of the players probably do."

On the atmosphere for Saturday:
"The one thing I would say is if you have tickets and you're an ASU fan, make sure they go to ASU fans. There's a lot of BYU fans in the Valley. Let's make sure if you're an ASU fan and you own a ticket and you're selling it or you're giving it away, make them show you an ASU hat or an ASU shirt. Show something ASU in order to get that ticket. I think it's one of the most expensive tickets in college football right now, are the tickets in this game on Saturday. That's super exciting. The environment for the guys when they run out of the tunnel, that's real. To be loud on third downs on fourth downs, the advantage is real. I can't wait until we hit our first third down, their offense, our defense and the place just stands up and erupts."

On coaching players in the social media era: 
"I just show them what's actually being said, I don't like them or try to trick them. When people are saying bad things, I show them the bad things. Now people are saying these good things, I have a three minute videotape of everybody saying how great we are. Let's not hide from what people are saying, let's approach it. Like today we started our meeting and I started with, “We're the number 21 team in the country” and everybody booed. They're like, “what are you doing?” Because they know me and it’s like, “who cares?” Nobody cares, nobody in three years is going to say, remember when ASU was ranked 21 in week 11 in 2024. “What does it even mean?” It's an irrelevant thing. What matters is just maximizing the day and repeating. I try to do that just through honesty, not any games just like here it is. Are we good? Does anybody really care? Let's move along. Let's keep the main thing, the main thing."

On his approach towards social media:
"I operate it, obviously. So if there are spelling errors, it's 100% on me. That's how you know it's genuine. It's the world we live in. Like I said, you're living under a rock if you're not using it. I try to use it to brand our players. I try to use it to brand narratives. I don't use it for myself. I don't have a personal, I don't use personal social medias... I used it to try to bring our players like X (Xavion Alford) the other day, 100 yard landlord with a pick. The other day, Martell Hughes who's in the Barrett Honors school. You never know when somebody's going to see that and create a connection with somebody in the NIL era. It could be like “Oh, that kid who got a block punt is in the Barrett school. I went to the Barrett school. I own a business. Maybe I want that dude to represent my business.”  Maybe 100 yard landlord (Xavion Alford), “Wow, he got a pick. He's on the leadership council. Well, I own condos. Maybe I want to give him free rent and an awesome condo for him to do a big advertisement of the 100 yard landlord.” If you don't put things out there for the guys, they're not going to get anything. I'm just trying to do my part and trying to help them and, see if we can shake some trees."

On defensive back Shamari Simmons' performance against Kansas State:
“He's playing at a very high level. I think his move to the nickel was really good for him with his physicality. He's a very physical nickel…So the fact that he can play at that level of physicality is impressive. I’m very impressed with how he's playing and the passion he's playing with and the intelligence he's playing with. He's done a phenomenal job this year.”

On the BYU game kicking off at 1:30 p.m. AZT:
“There's some data behind night games and opposing quarterback QBR and stuff like that, but I'm not too concerned about it. That thing is going to be rocking. I remember the last day game that probably had a sold-out crowd at this level of intensity was Notre Dame. That was an unbelievable crowd. What was that, 10 years ago now? That was also a day game… It's good for us that we're playing meaningful football in November specifically here because the weather is so nice. Who wouldn't want to be at the game? Where else would you want to be than in Mountain America Stadium at 1:30 on Saturday. That's why the ticket prices are so high. We live in the best city in America, and everybody’s moving back. If you left, you're back because it's 70 degrees outside in the middle of November and you get to watch meaningful football. What else is there to do? That is the ticket. I'm excited to see how many people tailgate because I actually think we're going to have a great turnout in the tailgating stuff outside as well.”

On what makes BYU’s defense so good and how Kalani Sitake has improved it:
“The versatility of it... They're not scared to play a saftey at 18 yards deep over somebody and say 'run it.' The way he (Kalani Sitake) dictates to offenses is unique. A lot of people say they want to take people away or say they want to take something away. But anytime you take something away, you're obviously vulnerable to something else. Coaches are sometimes paranoid that if I do this, then they're going to do this. He does a really good job trying to take away a team's strengths and he's done it for a long time.”

On if BYU will have a game plan for wide reciever Jordyn Tyson:
“I'm 100 percent positive they're going to have a game plan for Jordyn. Do they think one of their guys can match up versus him and do they think they need to spin coverage to him? Whatever that is, I don't know. If he (Coach Sitake) wants to let me know, I'd appreciate it. But if he doesn't want to let me know, then hopefully it doesn't work, because they're definitely going to have a game plan. He's going to do a great job preparing their guys. We're going to have other guys step up and we have to be able to run the ball more effectively this week than we did last week.”

On how the run defense has evolved throughout the season:
“I think for the most part it’s been really good. A little bit inconsistent versus UCF, but I think our run defense has been one of the strengths of our football team. Obviously, we have to stop the run this week too. When you're a run play action football team on first down and you can establish the run, that opens everything up. That's the identity of this team. But we have to be able to stop the run early to get them into situations where they're trying to complete third downs. Third downs should be an advantage for the home team if we're allowed with the sold out crowd.”

On having no changes to the injury report:
“Everybody that played last week should be good this week. There are no changes there. Jake (Smith) tweaked his hamstring last week late in the week, and we didn't know. He ended up not being able to go on Friday's practice, so he didn’t travel because he wasn't going to be able to go. So that's the only guy from last Monday that somewhat changed. He's questionable to doubtful, but other than that it's status quo when it comes to injuries. Just a lot of bumps and bruises.”

On what he remembers from the last undefeated home slate for ASU in 2004:
"2004? I was 14. The only thing I can really thing of is that's right around the time when Halo 1 came out, or Halo 2. So I was either watching games or probably playing Halo 2 with people in high school. I was a freshman in high school. I was in the junior little league world series and we were one game away from making it to the world series. We lost to Hawaii that year. Not much other than that."

On what it would mean to finish undefeated at home for the first time since 2004:
“It would be awesome. We talk about how you have to protect home field. Coach Hines Ward brought a mentality and he said something to me after the second home game. He said, ‘we used to talk in Pittsburgh all the time, just win at home and split on the road.’ It's kind of funny, now you look at us right now and we’ve won at home and we're close to splitting on the road so far. I think it's come to fruition. So it would be an exciting thing to send the seniors out undefended at home for the first time since most of their birth.”