Tempe, Ariz. — The Arizona State Sun Devils head to Pasadena, Calif. on Saturday unranked for the first time all season as they take on the 16th ranked University of Southern California Trojans in a Pac-12 South contest.

USC (3-1, 2-0) enters with a great chance to push ASU (3-1, 1-1) out of contention for the Pac-12 South championship. USC, UCLA, and the University of Arizona are the only South members who still maintain undefeated conference records, with UCLA’s lone Pac-12 coming against ASU a week ago.

The Trojans defeated the Stanford Cardinal in week 2 on the road 13-10 and then beat up on the Oregon State Beavers last week with a final score of 35-10. 

Quarterback Cody Kessler has been superb thus far throwing for 1107 yards, 10 touchdowns, zero interceptions, while completing 72% of his passes. His number one target, Nelson Agholor, has 26 receptions on the year for 239 yards and three touchdown receptions. Agholor is finally the number one receiver after being behind Marqise Lee in the depth chart for the past two seasons and his production has definitely shown.

Javorius Allen comes into the game with the 4th most rushing yards in the Pac-12 with 433 yards. He has 15 receptions and 164 receiving yards on top of that as he and DJ Foster are the top dual-threat running backs in the Pac-12 this season. Allen had a very productive outing against Oregon State in which he posted 115 rushing yards and a touchdown.

Mike Bercovici is back at the helm of the Sun Devil offensive attack this week with starting quarterback Taylor Kelly still sidelined with a foot injury. Bercovici performed well in his first career start against UCLA and even set school records with 42 completions on 68 attempts. He finished with 488 yards and three touchdown passes, but also had two interceptions.

Foster had his first “subpar” game in which he only posted nine carries for 30 yards and caught five passes for 68 yards. This 98 all-purpose yard game can be labeled as “subpar” after his performances in weeks 1-3 where he posted 173, 270, and 206 yards respectively. The junior running back is averaging 8.6 yards per carry and has already set career-highs in rushing yards and is just one rushing touchdown behind his career high in that category.

Having home-field advantage is always helpful in collegiate football and USC has taken advantage of that against ASU by winning the last seven home games against the Sun Devils with the last ASU victory at the Los Angeles Coliseum dating back to 1999. The Trojans will continue this streak by defeating the Sun Devils 37-23 on Saturday night.