First Start, Great Finish

Sam Keller made Arizona State forget about injured star quarterback Andrew Walter, if only for one special afternoon.

Keller made everyone else forget about Kyle Orton’s last-minute heroics with some of his own.

Showing remarkable poise in his first collegiate start, Keller threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Rudy Burgess with 44 seconds left to lead the Sun Devils to a 27-23 victory over Purdue in the Sun Bowl on Friday.

“I’ve never been so ready for anything my entire life,” said Keller, who completed 25 of 40 passes for 370 yards and three touchdowns. “I had a ton of confidence coming into the game, but I still didn’t really know what to expect.”

Neither did Purdue.

Starting for Walter, the untested sophomore completed all four of his passes on the winning drive for 80 yards in a frantic finish that stunned the Boilermakers and the Sun Bowl-record crowd of 51,288.

Burgess caught Keller’s final throw on a screen play, slipped two tackles along the sideline and cut back inside en route to the end zone to give the 21st-ranked Sun Devils (9-3) the lead after Purdue had gone ahead 30 seconds before.

The Boilermakers (7-5) had one more chance, but Orton’s desperation heave into the end zone fell incomplete as time expired.

Burgess, who wasn’t named a starter until Hakim Hill was kicked off the team this week for breaking unspecified team rules, also had a career afternoon -- 189 yards of total offense and two touchdown receptions.

“I’m going to share my MVP trophy with Rudy,” Keller said. “I just tossed the ball to him and he did the rest.”

Darian Hagan added nine receptions for 182 yards and a touchdown for the Sun Devils, who had lost their three previous bowl games.

The Sun Devils were also missing defensive coordinator Brent Guy, who resigned three weeks ago to take over as head coach at Utah State. Arizona State hired Florida assistant Bill Miller as his replacement the day before the Sun Bowl.

If the smothering performance against Purdue is any indication, Miller will have plenty to work with. The Sun Devils held the nation’s 12th-ranked offense to 347 yards, the Boilermakers’ third-lowest output of the year.

“Sam played great today,” Arizona State Coach Dirk Koetter said, “but the game was won by our defense.”

Arizona State’s two novice offensive standouts outplayed Purdue’s Orton and Taylor Stubblefield, one of the NCAA’s most prolific pass-catch duos. Orton completed 23 of 47 passes for 281 yards with three touchdowns and Stubblefield had seven catches for 81 yards in their final college game together.

“They had a real advantage of speed against us,” Orton said. “I think they were a much faster defense than we thought going into it.”