Athlon: ASU’s latest early-season upset could come against Michigan State

Expectations are rather low for the Arizona State Sun Devils in 2018.

They are being predicted by the Pac-12 media to be the worst team in the Pac-12 South, firmly locking themselves into an underdog mentality all year.

With that in mind, how would the narrative of the season change if the Sun Devils were to beat Michigan State in their second game of 2018?

Athlon looked into the best potential upsets on the Pac-12 schedule and ranked the Sept. 8 matchup second thanks to ASU’s pedigree for early-season upsets at home.

Late summer brings unpredictable monsoon rains to the state of Arizona. Get caught in the wrong place while out for an evening drive, and your car might be inundated in flood waters. In the rainy season is an apt metaphor for Arizona State games coinciding with this part of the season.

Sun Devil Stadium has been home to plenty of memorable, early-season upsets. Last season’s aforementioned defeat of Washington ranks among the most landscape-altering upsets of 2017, while ’18 visitor Michigan State can look to Big Ten Conference mates for other noteworthy examples. Arizona State jump-started its run to the 1997 Rose Bowl with a shocker against defending national champion Nebraska in the opening month of that season. In much more recent times, Wisconsin saw its hopes dashed on a stormy final drive.

Fresh off a 10-win season in 2017, Michigan State is ranked No. 12 in the USA Today coaches preseason poll and is part of a loaded Big Ten conference.

Pinnacle High School product and junior quarterback Brian Lewerke leads the Spartans. Lewerke threw for 20 touchdowns in 2017 and ran for another five, racking up more than 3,000 all-purpose yards.

For the Sun Devils, an upset win on national TV against one of the country’s best teams would certainly be a welcome jumpstart to the Herm Edwards era in Tempe.

But nonconference home wins over ranked opponents have been hard to come by, in the monsoon season or not.

Arizona State’s last such victory came in a 55-31 win over No. 10 Notre Dame in November of 2014. Before that, a September 2013 upset of No. 20 Wisconsin came in part due to a wacky end-of-game sequence.

ASU beat No. 21 Mizzou in overtime in the second game of the 2011 season and prior to that hadn’t beaten a ranked nonconference opponent at home since a 2004 drubbing of No. 16 Iowa.

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