ASU heading to Texas A&M with QB Cutter Boley having SEC experience

TEMPE — Any college football team facing a top-10 opponent on the road has a challenge in front of it, but Arizona State heading to College Station to face No. 10 Texas A&M on Saturday is a different animal.

Kyle Field averaged well over 100,000 fans in attendance last season, and it saw a listed attendance of 107,782 in the season opener, a 50-0 win over Missouri State.

While ASU quarterback Cutter Boley never played at Texas A&M, he did have four SEC road starts while at Kentucky last season:

• 35-13 loss at South Carolina: 10 of 19 passing for 124 yards and two interceptions
• 35-14 loss at Georgia: 25 of 41 passing for 225 yards with two touchdowns and one interception
• 10-3 win at Auburn: 18 of 29 passing for 161 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions
• 45-17 loss at Vanderbilt: 26 of 44 passing for 280 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions

“The last two years, I gained a lot of experience and using that to kind of go in and prepare for every game we’re going to play this year,” Boley said. “Just being prepared as possible. The crowd noise has never really been an issue, but just being prepared as possible and being so dialed in the game plan, just always knowing what’s going on.”

The game will be a great test case for how much better the supporting cast around Boley is at ASU than it was at Kentucky, if at all.

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko on Monday highlighted the “two NFL wideouts” that the Sun Devils have in Omarion Miller and Reed Harris, who combined for 170 yards just after the catch in Saturday’s opener against Morgan State.

Boley, who was named Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week for his record-setting debut, had 365 of his 387 passing yards come after the catch (with some accounting for extra yards on screen passes behind the line of scrimmage). Finding those opportunities again will be critical in pulling out an upset.

ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham is 1-2 against SEC teams and 0-1 in true road games over his first three seasons at ASU. The Sun Devils ended the 2024 season by losing the Peach Bowl to Texas 39-31 in double overtime and lost at Mississippi State 24-20 in Week 2 of last year.

“The guys that have been here the last two years have played in high-profile games. I know Cutter’s played in high-profile games,” Dillingham said Monday. “I know for some guys, it’ll be their first high-profile (game), their first game in this environment. And it will be surreal for them. … To say there is a way to prepare for your first game with 100,000 fans on the road is not real.

“The key is it can be fun. It can be exciting. It can be loud, but I mean I can listen to the loudest music I want and still think how I want to think. Like, I have this play; this is how I execute it. I think you got to be able to block it out and … just listen, and then take what you know and go execute the play. All the other stuff is noise.”

ASU entering logistical nightmare leaving College Station for London

The Sun Devils will not return to Tempe after battling the top-10 squad, instead electing to head straight to London ahead of a Week 3 conference matchup against Kansas at Wembley Stadium. It’s why Saturday’s game is being played early at 9 a.m. MST.

It inherently prevents ASU from taking it truly one week at a time, as Dillingham said the staff met Monday morning to review logistics.

“There are some natural distractions. We’re not hiding away from that,” Dillingham said. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so we’re going to embrace it and we got to get ready to play a football game though.”

Boley will hit two weeks removed from being named the starter when this week’s game kicks off. Not long before that, he was voted as one of the leaders of the team onto the Tillman Leadership Council at Camp T. He said helping the group stay focused through the unorthodox 11 days on the road requires enjoying the moments as they happen.

“You got to keep the main thing the main thing always, and I think our guys know that,” Boley said. “But also being able to still have fun playing ball and outside of that … we’re never, like, super strict. Like coach Dilly says, we want to have the most fun working harder than anyone else in the country, and I think we really stand on that, and I think we really grind really hard.”

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