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Arizona Football Hotsheet: Wildcats Football '08

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Troy Nolan is tied for second on his Arizona State team with three touchdowns.

He's a free safety.

"Which isn't good for the offense," quarterback Rudy Carpenter said.

For the defense, it's tremendous.

The Sun Devils have scored a defensive touchdown in each of their past four games, maybe the most impressive statistic by any Pac-10 team this season.

On Friday against UCLA, Arizona State tied an NCAA record by scoring four defensive touchdowns.

"Scoring that many points, it's remarkable," ASU coach Dennis Erickson said. "I haven't been around a performance where they score that many points.

"I've been around really good performances where you've stopped them and done a really good job, shut them out, things like that.

"But to score that many touchdowns, I don't know that, in my lifetime, I'll even come close to being around that again."

The first came on the strangest of fumbles. UCLA quarterback Kevin Craft cocked his arm to throw a pass, and the ball fell to the ground. It was picked up by running back Derrick Coleman, who, like Craft, thought it was an incomplete pass.

Linebacker Mike Nixon knocked the ball away from Coleman, and defensive tackle Paul 'Unga ran it in for a 17-yard touchdown.

Erickson called it "one of the most unique plays in all of football that I've ever been around."

The next three scores were more conventional — interception returns of 38, 100 and 45 yards.

The last two came 46 seconds apart in the fourth quarter.

"You've got to have luck in that kind of situation," Erickson said. "You have to play hard, be around the football and all those things. You've got to have some things happen the right way.

"Sometimes you get behind, you're trying to make things happen on offense and you throw where you shouldn't, and fortunately we had a couple of picks."

Mike Stoops watched the first half of Friday's game, later hearing that ASU won by 25 points.

But it wasn't until arriving in his office Saturday that he found out how they did it.

"That's pretty amazing right there," he said. "They took advantage of their opportunities. That's a credit to them."

Fourteen of the Sun Devils' 22 turnovers have come in their past six games, starting with three interceptions against USC.

ASU has totaled nine turnovers in its past three games, all victories. But it did play the three worst teams in the Pac-10 — Washington, Washington State and UCLA.

On Friday, it changed the Sun Devils' offensive game plan.

Carpenter joked that his offense "didn't even come close" to scoring a touchdown, but that toward the end of the game, it was enough to protect the football.

"At that point in time," he said, "chalk it up to a loss and don't let them score on defense."

The Sun Devils won't be able to do that against the Wildcats, who average 37.6 points per game.

But the underdogs will need continued help from their defense — and probably another touchdown.

"I wish I knew what was going right," Nixon said. "You look back at our early games, and every tipped ball was falling into the other team's hands, and every chance to make a play, we didn't.

"But we've found a way to catch those breaks and get them back on our side. It's obviously been a big part of our game."