This Pain Familiar to Sun Devils

A bounce here, a catch there.

A minute then, a minute now.

A missed tackle in 1997, a wayward pass in 2005.

Count Arizona State as being officially spooked by its football past and present, the most recent haunting Saturday’s come-from-ahead defeat against USC.

If ... if ... if.

If Ohio State had not scored with 19 seconds left to win the 1997 Rose Bowl, Arizona State would have won the national championship.

If Arizona State had not blown a 17-7 fourth-quarter lead on Sept. 10 against then-No. 5 Louisiana State, and not blown a 21-3 halftime lead to No. 1 USC on Saturday before losing, 38-28, Arizona State today would be a top-five team and positioned nicely for a chance to do a Rose Bowl do-over for the national title this season.

But that’s not the way history recorded it.

The Sun Devils did not stop Ohio State when it had to in that Rose Bowl, the game-winner coming on a five-yard scoring pass from Joe Germaine to David Boston, did not stop LSU three weeks ago and, when it counted Saturday, did not stop USC.

Arizona State learned another hard Yogi Berra lesson at Sun Devil Stadium.

It’s not over when you think it’s over, or when your fans think it is over.

The game is not over when it’s 21-3 at the half and Sun Devil quarterback Sam Keller raises both arms in joyful triumph before he ducks his head into the tunnel on the way to halftime.

The same Keller later limped through the same tunnel on a walk toward a darker side.

Arizona State (3-2) would talk about all the little things that might have made a difference.

There was one play in particular, a season-turning whopper, with 3:32 left and ASU down, 31-28.

Keller threw a post pass over the middle to a leaping Derek Hagan for an apparent first down. On his way down, though, Hagan let the ball slip out of his hands and into the lap of USC safety Kevin Ellison at the Trojan 46.

“USC just caught a lucky break on that play,” Hagan said of the interception, before offering an important addendum, “in my mind, I should make that play every single day.”

He didn’t, though, and USC made him pay three plays later, when LenDale White’s 46-yard touchdown run produced the final score.

Arizona State, for a half, played USC tougher than any team in recent memory. First-year defensive coordinator Bill Miller used a combination of defenses to frustrate the nation’s hardest-to-stop offense.

It wasn’t a matter of Arizona State trying to sit on the lead either. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

“In games like this, you have to go for the jugular,” Coach Dirk Koetter said.

Koetter did not count on Keller, who started the game having gone 124 passes without an interception, having five against the Trojans.

Having a pass intercepted did not stop Keller from having another picked off. He continued to attack the USC secondary, almost recklessly at times.

“Two or three balls Sam would like to have back,” Koetter said. “You can be mad about it for a minute, but you can not not force the ball down the field.”

Koetter knew USC was going to charge back. This was, after all, the same team that spotted Oregon a 13-0 lead last week before scoring 45 points in a row.

Koetter wanted to answer every Trojan point with a counterpoint.

Keller gave no indication he might not be up to the task. He is an exciting player, a throwback type, the same man who replaced an injured Andrew Walter last year and led Arizona State to a Sun Bowl win.

On Saturday, though, Keller tried to do too much. With his team up, 21-10, in the third quarter, he tried to thread the needle to Hagan on a sideline route, only to watch Justin Wyatt step in front for the interception that led to USC’s cutting the lead to four on an ensuing Reggie Bush touchdown run.

Keller completed 26 of 45 attempts for 347 yards with two touchdowns.

The five interceptions, though, turned out to be Sam Killers.

“Most of it is on me,” Keller said of the loss. “I’ll take responsibility for it, for this one.”

It was only Keller’s sixth collegiate start, and he learned some valuable lessons about winning close games and losing them.

“Maybe sometimes we got overaggressive and I tried to make some plays I shouldn’t have,” he said. “It seemed like they were always in position to make the play. When it was a bad throw, they were right there just to get it.”

Just lucky or just good?

Arizona State would love to know the feeling.

“I think they were scared at a lot of points in the game,” Keller said of USC.

Not the important parts, though.

Like the 1996 season, it seemed all set up for Arizona State this year. The Sun Devils got a break when the LSU game was moved to Tempe after Hurricane Katrina.

Arizona State missed California on the Pacific 10 Conference rotation this year and had USC right where it wanted it: at home, and down by 18.

A minute here, a minute there.

First Ohio State. Then LSU.

Then Saturday.

“It’s really tough to come up short like that,” Keller would say. “At the end of the day, it’s just painful.”