October 21, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Taking right road is the Cardinal goal

by Rick Eymer

Here it is, a year later and the Stanford football team approaches the crossroads of its season. Which way it turns this weekend will shape whether Walt Harris can get his team into a bowl game or whether the program begins an overhaul.

On Oct. 22, 2004 Stanford was 4-2 on the season before losing five straight to end the season.

On Oct. 22, 1995 - Tyrone Willingham's first season - the Cardinal were 4-2-1 and headed to the Liberty Bowl. Bill Walsh had his team at 5-2 in the first season of his second stint with Stanford on Oct. 22, 1992, and racing toward the Blockbuster Bowl and a No. 9 national ranking.

While the Cardinal (2-1, 3-2) have put together three road wins this season, they have yet to win at home and need a win over a quality program like Arizona State to be able to set their sights toward postseason play.

Harris has a nearly impossible task ahead of him. The remaining six teams on the schedule are at .500 or better, including co-Pac-10 leaders USC and UCLA, both unbeaten, and Notre Dame.

"We found out we could lose to anybody," Harris said. We're hoping to find out we can beat anybody one of these games."

Arizona State (1-2, 3-3) presents just such an opportunity. The Sun Devils possess the conference's best passing attack, second best overall offensive team, and fourth best scoring team.

Arizona State averages nearly 39 points a game, 368 passing yards and 519 offensive yards. Stanford is seventh in both pass defense and total defense.

Winning three games has been huge for the Cardinal's overall confidence. Beating the Sun Devils would lift Stanford to another level.

"If we can win it, it'll make a statement to us. It's a very big, and I'm excited about it. For us to come together and defeat a team like Arizona State, it would prove to us a lot of things," Stanford senior linebacker Jon Alston said. "I'm a senior; I can be greedy. I want to play in a bowl game. It's something that drives me. It's a purpose. As a leader, I have to make sure that our attitudes and goals are in the same place. Arizona State is huge for us."

Here's what stands in Stanford's way: junior quarterback Sam Keller leads the Pac-10 with 344.5 passing yards a game and 20 touchdown passes. He's thrown at least two touchdown passes in every game. Senior wide receiver Derek Hagan has caught at least one pass in each of the past 35 games. He's two receptions short of tying Stanford's Darrin Nelson for seventh on the all-time Pac-10 list and 104 yards shy of Oregon State's James Newson's 3,572 receiving yards, third all-time.

"Keller to Hagan, it's pretty simple," Alston said. "The guy can catch and the guy can throw and they can do it better than a lot of people. We have to prepare like they have the best QB-WR tandem in the country."

The best defense may be a good offense. "The longer we can keep Sam Keller and his troops off the field, the better we'll be," Harris said. "But the Sun Devils' defense also stopped USC for a long period of time in their ballgame, so they have an equally talented team on defense. They have a complex scheme that puts a lot of pressure on your players."

What has kept Stanford competitive in most games is that the offense holds onto the ball and does just enough to score while the defense works overtime to bend, not break, and force turnovers.

The Cardinal has suffered two disappointing losses at home, and that needs to change.

"This is our home and our house. We need to protect it and defend it. We need to come out and play even better than how we have played on the road and be really excited to play here," Alston said. "I love playing at Stanford Stadium; it's the only place I've every wanted to play. To come here and have the opportunity to say thank you to the fans, try to show them that we do care, and that we want to win for them. We have two big home games (UCLA comes in on Oct. 29) coming up, and we need to put our stake in the ground at Stanford Stadium and say `This is our house'."

Stanford also has a little revenge in mind. The Sun Devils scored on their final drives of both the first half and of the game to earn the comeback victory in last year's contest in Tempe.

"We definitely haven't forgotten about the game last year down at Arizona State," Stanford strong safety Brandon Harrison said. "It was a situation where we felt the offense and special teams played well enough for us to win, and in the end on defense we just couldn't hold them on their drive at the end of the game. For me personally, it's definitely a game that has stuck in my mind, because it's one that I felt we gave away at the end. We still remember it and will use it as a point of emphasis, knowing that we were right there with this team last year and gave it away. We need to play better on our side of the ball than we did last year."

NOTES: In conjunction with homecoming, several other sports scheduled games against their alumni. Both the men and women's swimming teams host a 10 a.m. meet with their alumni at Avery Aquatic Center, with an alumni scrimmage in women's water polo set for 11 a.m. Field hockey also plays an alumni match on Saturday, while the baseball team hosts an alumni game on Sunday at noon, and the sailing team sponsors an alumni event . . . Stanford ranks first in the Pac-10 and 11th nationally in turnover ratio (plus 1.20).

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