Arizona State’s Season At Crossroads Following Letdown Loss

TEMPE — The 2025 Arizona State Sun Devils have officially joined the ranks of confounding sports teams based in the Phoenix area following a 24-16 loss to the Houston Cougars.

The third season of the Kenny Dillingham era began with such promise – as the team was ranked 11th in the AP preseason poll and many expected the team to be improved on both sides of the ball – at least as the season progressed.

Now the season is officially at an inflection point following a performance that screamed regression in response to one of the program’s biggest wins in years over Texas Tech.

While many will put the brunt of responsibility for the loss on uneven officiating or the absence of Jordyn Tyson, Dillingham ultimately doesn’t subscribe to it – stating that the team simply did not play well enough as a whole to secure a victory.

“Yeah. I mean, you’re losing the number one pick in his position in the college football so that’s obviously, you know, pretty critical for your football team when you’re losing. You know him, is that an excuse? Heck no, we didn’t play good enough to win. You know, maybe, if he played, maybe we have survived not playing good enough to win. But that doesn’t mean we played good enough to win.

You know, you got to look at the facts, and the facts are, we lost turnover battle. We had too many penalties. We lost field position. We couldn’t stop the plus one run game. And does have nothing to do with Jordyn and but, yes, not having Jordyn Tyson 100% is going to have an effect on the football game, right? But that’s not an excuse to why we lost the football game.”

The Sun Devil program now has to re-calibrate ahead of a road game against their 2024 Big 12 title game opponent in Iowa State – several areas of the squad have to be cleaned up in the week ahead, from special teams in lieu of another subpar showing, to the run defense – who ceded 111 yards on the ground to Houston QB Conner Weigman after getting torched by Utah QB Devon Dampier just two weeks prior.

The Sun Devils no longer have the ability to control their own destiny in the Big 12 – they now need Cincinnati and BYU to drop at least two games, as well as Utah to lose another game, Houston to drop one of their remaining four games, and potentially even more to have a shot at defending their Big 12 title. This is truly a crossroads in their season – but should this season be considered a failure if the team falls short? It remains to be seen, but stay tuned with Arizona State on SI in the meantime over the final four games of the regular season.

Read more on why the Arizona State men’s basketball team will exceed expectations in the 2025-26 season here, and on three major takeaways from the win over Texas Tech here.

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