ASU coach Graham: If we don’t win Pac-12, season is not a success
Jul 30, 2015, 4:30 PM | Updated: 4:44 pm
It would be very un-Todd Graham-like to not express confidence in his Arizona State Sun Devils team.
Yet, when he professes faith in his current squad, one that was picked to finish second in the Pac-12 South by the conference’s media and is ranked 16th in the preseason Amway Coaches Poll, you get the sense that he really, truly believes this could be a special season in Tempe.
And it will all start on Sept. 5 when ASU heads to Houston, TX, to face off with Texas A&M.
“I’ll tell you, one of the things that — I don’t really care what anybody else is doing or how they’re going about it — they came to me with that game, Steve Patterson was our A.D. a couple years, and he said, ‘What do you think of this game?.'” Graham told the Pac-12 Networks Thursday from Pac-12 Media Days. “And I didn’t hesitate. It’s the kind of game I want to coach in, it’s the kind of game I know we’re ready for going into our fourth season.”
Graham said though the game will be played at NRG Stadium and not Kyle Field, it will definitely have a road-game feel for his team, but even still it is the kind of game his players want to play in and the school’s fans want to see the Devils be a part of.
“And let me tell you this, this has been the best summer, maybe since I’ve been coaching, in our players’ sense of urgency,” he said. “They have a sense of urgency. They understand we’re going on the road in the SEC right off the get-go.
“So I really like this game, and our future schedule has Michigan State and LSU and games like that, so I really believe when we played Notre Dame and Wisconsin in the same year it really helped us to be a better football team. So I love that game and I’m looking forward to the Sun Devils coming out and representing. We’ll be ready to go.”
Though an early matchup, the game could provide a clue into how good this ASU team will be. After winning eight games in Graham’s first year at the helm, the Sun Devils posted back-to-back 10 win seasons in his next two. Though they are not necessarily viewed as one of the premier teams in the country, no one would be surprised to see Arizona State in the conversation for a playoff berth late in the season.
It’s a far cry from last season, when outside expectations for the team were a bit down because, among other reasons, the Sun Devils had to replace a whopping nine starters on defense. Graham never seemed nervous about it, but admitted Thursday it wasn’t an ideal situation.
“Obviously last year we had a little chip on our shoulder because we had nine starters to replace,” the coach said. “I would like to tell you that I was extremely confident, but I’ll tell you this, but I worked — sometimes in desperation — we had to get better in a hurry.”
Last season the Devils were supposedly rebuilding, yet were in the playoff conversation late in the year and ended up winning 10 games. Kind of makes you wonder what Graham could do with a team that may be his most talented yet.
“What are our expectations,” he asked, rhetorically. “Our program’s about winning championships. If we don’t win the Pac-12 championship — I’m not talking about the South, I’m talking about the Pac-12 championship — we’ve not had a successful year. That’s the kind of place I want to work in. I’m not interested in coaching a place that wants to go to a bowl game.
“So when it comes to that, your players listen to what you say. Also, it’s convincing yourself. There’s no other option, this is what we’re doing, and so we need to work with that same sense of urgency this year and not say, ‘Oh, well we’ve got all these returning starters, we should be better.’ There’s no guarantees, you earn it every day.”