Weekend Update

Well the Devils have one thing going for them this weekend at least, no Pac-10 team has played well on the road. The best road win in the Pac-10 so far is Arizona's win over UCLA, not counting team's wins at Washington and Washington State because the local high school teams could travel up to Washington and win this season.

Keegan Herring is expected to make the start on Saturday, hopefully his hammy's will hold up long enough for the Devils to establish a bit of a run game. ASU ranks 117th out of 120 in rushing yards per game with just 83.7, a stat that has crippled the offense.

Rudy Carpenter is supposedly feeling better about his ankle, but will be tested by Oregon's pass defense. The Ducks lead the Pac-10 with 3.57 sacks per game and sacked Rudy nine times in last year's meeting.

Oregon still isn't set on who will be their starting quarterback for this weekend. It will either be Justin Roper, who began the season as the starter but injured his knee, or Jeremiah Masoli, who's been filling in. Either could start and both probably will play. Roper is the passer between the two but Masoli's running skills are better and fit slightly better into the Ducks' spread offense.

The Devils are expecting a large crowd this weekend of around 67,000. The game won't be televised after the athletic department decided to go with the traditional 7:00pm kick-off as opposed to moving the game up to the afternoon for television coverage. Oh, how far we've come since Gene Smith's days of selling our soul and frying our fans just to make that tv money and get out of the red.

ASU is currently fourth in the Pac-10 in attendance, averaging 63,738 for its first four home games. That's the highest average since 1998.

Saturday's game is the annual Hall of Fame game. This year's inductees are former coach Bruce Snyder, who took the Devils to the '96 Rose Bowl (winning national coach of the year) and is now battling cancer, Pat Tillman, and Eric Allen. The other inductee that catches the eye is Jeremy Veal of basketball fame.