A sell-out crowd at Martin Stadium will excitedly await to see if the Cougars (5-3, 3-2 Pac-12) can improve on their best start since 2006.

Washington State football will take on Arizona State (4-4, 2-3) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.

ASU has won each of the past three meetings between the two schools and is coming off of a 61-55 loss to Oregon in triple overtime. WSU senior safety Taylor Taliulu said the Cougars are just as anxious about getting back on the field as the Sun Devils are after losing to Stanford 30-28 a week ago.

“Knowing how Arizona State lost that game, you know they’re going to be fired up to come out on Saturday,” Taliulu said in a press conference. “But we’re going to be more fired up than them.”

Redshirt sophomore running back Jamal Morrow said there will be extra opportunities for redshirt sophomore quarterback Luke Falk to throw the ball downfield because ASU likes to blitz. That means that Morrow will spend most of his afternoon in pass protection.

“It’s a challenge,” Morrow said. “We’re putting our hard-working helmets on and getting ready to bang really the whole game. Arizona State’s a team that loves to blitz, so I’ve got to get with the o-line, get on the same page, and protect Luke … We’re not going to let nobody touch Luke this game.”

Falk currently leads the Pac-12 in passing yards (404.9 ypg), touchdowns (28) and total offense (396.2 ypg). However, the Cougar offense struggled to score touchdowns in the red zone against Stanford, settling for five field goals. Redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Cole Madison said the offensive line shoulders most of the blame for not helping to set an up-tempo pace, which directly led to not finishing drives and the slow start.

“We’ve got to finish, we can’t shoot ourselves in the foot,” Madison said. “We played a pretty good second half, but the first quarter is what killed us. We’ve got to come out strong. The last three games that we played good, we started off great, and we just didn’t start off great this last game.”

The Cougar defense played well against Stanford, holding its biggest offensive threat (sophomore running back Christian McCaffrey) to just 107 rushing yards. ASU brings its own version of McCaffrey to Pullman this week in the form of senior receiver D.J. Foster. Foster ran for three touchdowns in last season’s 32-31 ASU win against WSU, and will be a focal point of the Sun Devils’ attack once again.

“He can play receiver, he can play running back, wildcat,” Taliulu said of Foster. “It’s kind of the same thing with McCaffrey, we’ve just got to account for him and make sure we can do what we need to do to stop him.”

FOX Sports 1 will broadcast the game, and live audio will be available at www.wsucougars.com.