The Oregon Ducks took firm control of the Pacific-10 Conference title hunt, and made another push toward the top of the Bowl Championship Series race, by defeating the Arizona State Sun Devils 35-23 in front of an Autzen Stadium record crowd of 59,379 Saturday.
The win moved the Ducks to no. 3 in the BCS rankings, which is also their position in the Associated Press, Harris, and USA Today Coaches’ polls. Arizona State dropped to No. 9 after its loss.
For the second week in a row two top-10 teams clashed at Autzen, and for the second week in a row Oregon (8-1, 5-1 Pac-10) was out-gained in yards by the opposing team – Arizona State (8-1, 5-1 Pac-10) had 489 total yards to Oregon’s 400 total yards – and yet managed to lead and seemingly control the game throughout.

“We gave up a lot of yards defensively but we got some takeaways in the redzone again that are huge keys to our success this year,” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. “It’s been a defense that is bend-but-don’t-break, but has great pride down there.”
Junior rover Patrick Chung led the defense with a career high 15 tackles and junior defensive end Nick Reed was next with 11 tackles, including 3.5 sacks and five tackles for a loss. The Duck defense combined for nine sacks on the day for a total loss of 49 yards for the Sun Devils.
“I love nine sacks,” defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti said. “We put some pressure on, we blitzed a little bit. We just saw that when you got a little bit around his feet and stuff he was a little out of rhythm.”
“We needed to get pressure on their quarterback,” Bellotti said. “They are a good receiving crew, a good football team and pressure was our answer today.”
Bellotti pointed to penalties and dropped passes as areas of concern for him.

“I don’t think we played a perfect game in any way, shape or form,” said Bellotti. “We dropped probably three or four passes, unfortunately, that would have added to the scores most likely but, again, it’s great to win.”
And though the Ducks weren’t necessarily dominant, they still won comfortably, leading by 18 early in the second quarter, 21-3, and by 19 in the third quarter, 35-16.
But the day wasn’t a total victory, as the Ducks suffered another blow to their linebacking unit when John Bacon went down with a knee injury. Bacon tore his ACL and is out for the rest of the season according to Bellotti.
“Our depth has hit the bottom,” Bellotti said. “We don’t have many more linebackers and wide receivers.”
There was a nervous moment for Duck fans when senior quarterback Dennis Dixon grabbed his knee as he was tackled and rolled on the ground in pain before limping off the field midway through the second half. He was replaced by Brady Leaf for the rest of the game, though Dixon could be seen jumping up and down on the sideline and appeared to be walking comfortably after the game.
“Dennis Dixon is going to be fine,” said Bellotti. “I think he could have gone back in, although he was not totally comfortable, so we just (decided) that’s not worth it.”
Dixon threw for 189 yards and four touchdowns on 13 of 22 passing in the game and rushed for another 57 yards. The receivers were led by junior Jaison Williams with five catches for 106 yards and two touchdowns and freshman Drew Davis caught the first touchdown pass of his college career.
Jonathan Stewart ran the ball 21 times for 99 yards, narrowly missing a new Oregon all-time record 12th 100-yard performance. Stewart did pass Bobby Moore (Ahmad Rashad) for fifth on the Ducks’ all-time rushing list with 2,311 career yards.
Oregon has a bye this week and will resume conference play Thursday, Nov. 15 at Arizona. The bye is a welcome rest for a team that is a little beaten and bruised, according to Bellotti.
“It is a blessing,” he said. “We have a couple of guys dinged up that might have been a problem if we had to play this week. The rest will give them time to get healthy.”
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