Sam Leavitt leads ASU to convincing victory in 1st career start

Many would say Arizona State head football coach Kenny Dillingham was rolling the dice when he chose redshirt freshman Sam Leavitt as his starting quarterback. The transfer from Michigan State was the least experienced of the three options with Jeff Sims and returning veteran Trenton Bourguet having considerable starting experience.

The importance of that decision cannot be underestimated. Make the wrong choice and ASU probably is starting from square one again next season. But Dillingham's pick paid off as Leavitt and the Sun Devils cruised past visiting Wyoming 48-7 on Saturday night at Mountain America Stadium in the season opener for both squads.

Leavitt says he was calm, despite it being his first career start.

"I actually wasn't too nervous going in this game," he said. "That's a testament to the coaching staff and the team preparing, having answers for every situation, I watched a lot of film, seeing what I had to get to, whether it was a check or getting the ball to my playmakers. I didn't do anything special (Saturday), just got the ball to my playmakers and let them make plays and we had a great result."

ASU came in favored by six points but the Sun Devils dominated from start to finish. Leavitt finished 14-for-22 for 258 yards and two touchdowns in three quarters of work. He also rushed for 47 yards on eight tries, with a nifty 15-yard jaunt coming on a third-and-9 play that took the ball to the Wyoming 25 on ASU's first drive of the second half.

On the next play, he connected with tight end Chamon Metayer for a 25-yard scoring strike to make it 34-0. It marked the first scoring pass of Leavitt's still-young ASU career.

His longest play of the night was a 68-yard touchdown pass to sophomore running back Kyson Brown that made it 48-0 late in the third quarter.

He took a seat and gave way to Sims, a transfer from Nebraska, to start the fourth quarter with ASU comfortably ahead 48-0. Dillingham inserted other backups as well.

Dillingham was excited about what he saw from his young starter.

"I thought he was poised," Dillingham said. "Before the game, I just told him 'be yourself and when in doubt run'. Most of the time when you're a running quarterback, you're like, `Oh I want to prove that I can throw it.' So you get out there and you're like watch me show everybody that I can deal this thing.' No. You're athletic. Get out there and run. What I was proud of was he took that and applied it to the game. We talked about on first and second down we don't need you to be a superstar. We need you to manage the game. And it's third downs is when you can extend plays."

Meanwhile, it was not a happy homecoming for Wyoming quarterback Evan Svoboda. The Mesa Red Mountain product was making his second career start and had a difficult outing, going just 6-for-15 for 42 yards with two interceptions. One of the interceptions came on the second play of the game and was returned 29 yards for a touchdown by ASU linebacker Zyrus Fiaseu.

The second interception was by Keyshaun Elliott and it led to a 29-yard field goal by Ian Hershey that made it 10-0. The Sun Devils never looked back.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sam Leavitt leads ASU to convincing victory in 1st career start