Nickname: Sun Devils
Location: Tempe, Ariz.
Enrollment: 79,593
Home field: Mountain America Stadium (Capacity: 53,599)
Conference: Big 12
2023 record: 3-9, 2-7 Pac-12
All-time series record vs. UCF: 1-0
Last meeting: Sept. 7, 2002 (Arizona State won 46-13)
Editor’s note: This is the 10th installment in a 12-part series highlighting UCF’s 2024 football opponents.
UCF’s Nov. 9 game at Arizona State promises to be a No. 1 versus No. 2 showdown — in terms of undergraduate population, anyway.
U.S. News reported last November that Arizona State maintains the nation’s largest enrollment with 65,492 undergrads on campus, just over 6,700 more than UCF. When it comes to football, though, the Sun Devils are currently at the bottom of the Big 12 pile.
Arizona State was picked to finish last among the realigned conference’s 16 teams in the preseason media poll after a 3-9 campaign in 2023 in which 31 players missed a combined 143 games due to injury. The schedule does the Sun Devils no favor this fall, either — tricky nonconference games against Wyoming, Mississippi State and Texas State, plus head-to-head bouts with each of the five Big 12 teams that debuted in the US LBM Coaches Poll (Utah, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Arizona and Kansas).
UCF football schedule highlights: 3 games that could define Knights’ second Big 12 season
“I’m not against it,” second-year coach Kenny Dillingham said. “It’s the worst three-year stretch in Arizona State history. Our job is to change it. We can either talk about it, or we can read it and be pissed off about it and change it. But it’s just not going to happen by people saying, ‘Oh, that’s not true.’ Well, it is true.
“So if you want to change it, change it. That’s kind of the message to the team.”
West Virginia made voters regret their last-place choice last year with a nine-win season, bulldozing…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ucf-opponent-previews-kenny-dillingham-090845093.html
Author : Daytona Beach News-Journal
Publish date : 2024-08-19 09:08:45
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