ORLANDO – Carson Smith booted four field goals, true freshman Jake Fette looked the part and after a tumultuous 24 hours, Sun Devil Football got off the plane, off the bus and took care of business in a workmanlike and efficient 26-13 victory at UCF to earn bowl eligibility for the third consecutive season.
True freshman running back Cardae Mack had another strong outing, rushing for over 100 yards for the fourth time this season. Mack finished with 111 yards on the ground with a touchdown that capped a 14-play, 81-yard drive to end the third and and start the fourth quarter to take a commanding 23-7 advantage on ASU’s longest drive of the year in both plays and time (7:16).
Fette finished with 212 passing yards on 22-for-37 and another errorless game at the helm of the Sun Devil offense. The true freshman extended several drives with both his legs and his arm and has not thrown an interception in his first three career starts.
Smith earned the game ball from head coach Kenny Dillingham, going 4-for-4 on field goals that included a season-high 51-yarder. He kicked three field goals in the final 4:18 of the first half alone and buried the Knights (5-5, 3-4 Big 12) with his 37-yarder with six minutes left in the game to make it a three-score contest at 26-7.
The Sun Devil defense was again stingy, holding UCF to just 182 yards and seven points through the first three quarters of the game and posting its sixth game of the season holding an opponent under 17 points - matching the program’s most since the 2021 campaign.
Jalen Thompson had two of ASU’s four sacks and forced a fumble while Owen Long again led the team with his nine tackles.
The Sun Devils entered uncharted territory in the collegiate football world, making a cross country trip from Tempe to Orlando on the day of the game following the unprecedented circumstances of Friday the 13th’s federal grounding of all flights in the United States. The trip was already scheduled to be ASU’s second-longest trip in the continental U.S. in program history and on a day when numerous college football games across the country were affected by the FAA stop on Friday, none of those involved a team having to fly approximately 1,800 miles across the country to get the game played.
Regardless, the Sun Devils were unfazed leaving their own football facility at 6 a.m. Arizona time and playing a game just over nine hours later on the opposite end of the country.
ASU put points on the board first with 14:55 left in the second quarter after a 10-play, 74-yard drive finished on a Marquis Gillis one-yard touchdown dive, set up by a trick play as Derek Eusebio took a lateral from Cardae Mack and found Anthony Miller at the two-yard line.
After Smith’s season-long 51-yarder with just over four minutes left in the first half, UCF marched down the field to make it a 10-7 game. ASU would get a 41-yard field goal from Smith with :43 seconds remaining in the first half and Thompson’s strip sack on the next UCF play set the Sun Devils up for another Smith field goal of 28 yards to give ASU a 16-7 edge heading into the halftime break.
The Day
The Sun Devil football team left the facility at 6 a.m., had wheels up by 7:25 a.m. and landed about three hours and 25 minutes later, went to a local hotel for couple of hours for lunch, team meetings and to stretch out. The team arrived at the stadium at its normal time (about two hours prior to kick off).
This all came after the Sun Devils split about four hours sitting on a plane and in the gate at the terminal on Friday afternoon during the nationwide groundstop.