Arizona State

College football Navy to face Arizona State in Kraft Bowl Navy and Arizona State will meet for the first time at the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl on Dec. 29 at AT&T Park in San Francisco, it was announced Sunday. The game will begin at 4 p.m. and be televised on ESPN2. The Sun Devils finished the regular season 7-5 with a 5-4 record in the Pacific-12. "Based on our visit in 2004, we have seen firsthand that the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is a magnificent overall environment and event," said Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said.

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TEMPE, Ariz. -- Bill Frieder, as kinetic as his campus is laid back, hustles down this corridor in a wing off Arizona State Sun Devil Stadium, and then stops abruptly at his locked office door. A handwritten note is stuck to it, and as he reaches to remove it, he reads aloud that Lattie Coor, the president here at Arizona State University, indeed will drop by a reception for basketball recruits an hour from now."Good," Frieder mutters as he unlocks his door, and then he wads up the sheet of paper, grabs a can of soda and plops into a chair behind his oversized desk.

A little more than a month into the season, Navy had lost to all three Football Bowl Subdivision opponents it had played, and the closest result in any of those beatings was 12-0 at home to San Jose State. Then came a road game against Air Force, which had won the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy for two straight years and appeared on the way to another when it carried an eight-point lead late into the fourth quarter. So when Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo recently reflected on the state of the team, he paused at some length to come up with an appropriate narrative of how the Midshipmen qualified for a ninth bowl appearance in 10 years.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Rick Pitino says he wants his Kentucky '' Wildcats to play defense as if they haven't eaten in two weeks, and last night they went on a feeding frenzy.Pressure defense and a seemingly endless bench inspired Kentucky's 97-73 drubbing of overmatched Arizona State in a Southeast Regional semifinal at Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center.The victory sends the top-seeded Wildcats, 28-4 and winners of 11 in a row, against second-seeded North Carolina in tomorrow's regional final.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Arizona State gained the Sweet 16. Manhattan gained another dose of respect.That was the outcome in the second round of the NCAA Southeast Regional yesterday at the Pyramid, where the Sun Devils overcame a four-point halftime deficit to earn a 64-54 decision that sent them to Birmingham, Ala., for this week's regional semifinal matchup with top-seeded Kentucky.It didn't come easy for the 13th-ranked Sun Devils (24-8) who trailed by as many as 11 before a barrage of free throws closed the gap to four, then prospered after coach Bill Frieder made some key offensive adjustments.

Leonard Braxton's second inquiry into a coaching position at Arizona State went better than the first, and as a result, Morgan State is looking for an athletic director and track and field coach.Braxton, who coached at Morgan State for 15 years and was the Bears' athletic director since 1988, was introduced yesterday as head coach of the Sun Devils' men's and women's track and field programs."You could say this is a dream come true," Braxton said via telephone from Tempe, Ariz. "Everything a coach needs is here, the facilities, the money to run a program properly, the support staff."

Not long after midday on a recent Monday, on the track at Western High School's Lumsden-Scott Stadium, Latosha Wallace noticed a drastic difference about a surface she once dominated, a surface she once called home. Four years ago, when the 22-year-old sprinter from Baltimore last ran here, she had capped a high school career that Division I college recruiters could not ignore. Wallace lettered all four years in track and field and cross country at Western. From 2001 to 2003, she earned All-City and All-Metro honors in indoor and outdoor track, and cross country.

NEW ORLEANS -- Thank you, Ohio State.Florida thanks you, and the men who brokered the Bowl Alliance thank you for knocking off Arizona State in the Rose Bowl yesterday and giving the Sugar Bowl what it was promised at the start of the college football season, a genuine national championship game.No. 1 Florida State and No. 3 Florida meet tonight in the Sugar Bowl, and No. 2 Arizona State's first loss means that the survivor of this intrastate grudge match at the Superdome will be the national champion, just as it was designed by the alliance.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- On the surface, it doesn't look as if life has changed much for Jake Plummer.He still plays in the same town and stadium where he became a folk hero by leading Arizona State to the Rose Bowl and nearly to a share of the national championship two years ago.He still dresses in jeans and sweat shirts, looking more like the relatively poor college student that he was rather than the second-highest-paid player in the NFL that he recently became.One...

If anyone wants to nitpick at Navy's football success over the past decade, a starting point - and finish line - might be the team's record in bowl games. Going into Saturday's Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl against Arizona State (7-5) at San Francisco's AT&T Park, Navy (8-4) has lost four of its last five postseason games and five of eight since 2003. Though two of the losses have been close - a 25-24 defeat to Boston College in the 2006 Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, N.C., and a 35-32 defeat to Utah the next year at the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego - many have been blowouts.

College football Navy to face Arizona State in Kraft Bowl Navy and Arizona State will meet for the first time at the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl on Dec. 29 at AT&T Park in San Francisco, it was announced Sunday. The game will begin at 4 p.m. and be televised on ESPN2. The Sun Devils finished the regular season 7-5 with a 5-4 record in the Pacific-12. "Based on our visit in 2004, we have seen firsthand that the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is a magnificent overall environment and event," said Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said.

Terrell Suggs heard the critics. He was out of shape. Overpaid. Unfocused. Selfish. In 2009, the Ravens linebacker recorded a career-low 4.5 sacks in his first season chasing quarterbacks with the weight of a fat, new contract extension on his broad shoulders. Two seasons later, Suggs, in the third year of a six-year, $63-million deal, has made all of that talk seem silly, while still entertaining fans and former critics alike by saying his own goofy things whenever the camera flashes on and a microphone gets shoved in his face.

Various commentators, including Susan Reimer and Jon Stewart, have compared the child abuse scandal at Penn State to the scandals involving young boys in the Roman Catholic church. The connection is valid if you view both institutions as being more concerned about avoiding scandal than protecting victims of abuse. But a true comparison would be if Penn State, Florida State, UCLA, Boston College, Arizona State and a dozen other colleges across the country all reported child abuse cases over the same 20-30 year period, involving multiple "coaches" whose acts were covered up. "Fr. Sandusky" would not have been fired and booted off campus.

When is OK for you, at a college game, to boo your home team's starting quarterback for the simple act of entering a game? The correct answer is "never," but that didn't stop UCLA's unfaithful Saturday night at the Rose Bowl. Kevin Prince was forced into the thick of the Washington State plot only because starter Richard Brehaut broke his leg. Prince, last ridiculed after three first-quarter interceptions against Texas, was greeted with derision before even being allowed the chance to throw another pick — which he quickly did. The song, remember, says be true to "your" school.

Records through Monday (last week's rank) 1. Texas 22-3 (3): You have to go back to Jan. 8 to find a team that scored at least 65 against the Longhorns. 2. Ohio State 24-1 (1): Hard to punish the Buckeyes, who shot 54.3 percent in their loss to Wisconsin. 3. Pittsburgh 23-2 (4): Panthers beat Villanova without leading scorer Ashton Gibbs. 4. Kansas 24-2 (2): The Jayhawks were blown out by Big 12 rival Kansas State on Monday night. 5. Duke 23-2 (5)

PASADENA, Calif. -- The second-ranked Arizona State Sun Devils were almost there. They were 100 seconds away from an undefeated season and a legitimate shot at college football's mythical national championship, but they probably know as well as anyone that 100 seconds can be a very, very long time.Arizona State and senior quarterback Jake Plummer are known for their fantastic finishes -- and they almost pulled off another one yesterday -- but it was the fourth-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes who staged the miracle comeback to score a 20-17 victory before 100,645 in the 83rd Rose Bowl.

Boston College (6-5) vs. Arizona State (6-5) Site: Aloha Stadium, Honolulu When: Today, 3:30 p.m. TV: Ch. 2 Line: Arizona State by 3 1/2 Outlook: BC will be without leading rusher William Green (15 TDs, 1,164 yards rushing) and senior CB D. J. Sutton because of suspensions. But senior RB Cedric Washington, who had a big year in 1999, is quite capable. QB Tim Hasselbeck (16 TD passes), can make plays if he has time to throw. Arizona State will be trying to send fired coach Bruce Snyder out on a winning note.

TEXAS BOWL Illinois (6-6) vs. Baylor (7-5) When: Today, 6 p.m. Where: Houston TV: ESPN About Illinois (4-4 Big Ten): The Illini finished on a down-note, losing three out of its final four games but still managed to make the postseason for the first time since the 2007 Rose Bowl. RB Mikel LeShoure is second in the conference in rushing (1,513). About Baylor (4-4 Big 12): After a 7-2 start, the Bears stumbled down the stretch losing its final three games.

Arizona State blocked kicker Alex Zendejas' game-winning extra point to force overtime and then blocked another extra point in the second overtime as the Sun Devils upset Arizona 30-29 Thursday night to become bowl eligible (6-6). The Wildcats fell to 7-5. •Syracuse accepted an invitation to represent the Big East in the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium. The Orange (7-5) will face a Big 12 team on Dec. 30 in their first bowl game since 2004. • Steve Patton is out after 14 seasons as Gardner-Webb's coach.