No signs of letdown as Beavers dance past ASU.

Byline: Bob Rodman The Register-Guard

O S U f o o t b a l l

CORVALLIS - No letdown, no turnovers, no mercy and now there's no telling what they can do.

After dancing across the national stage with last week's dismantling of powerful USC, the Beavers sashayed past Arizona State on Saturday.

The 44-10 drilling amid the rain and wind and in front of a Reser Stadium crowd of 38,274 might have surprised some, but not the Beavers.

"We're getting an attitude and a swagger about us," bellowed 309-pound defensive tackle Curtis Coker in the wet but wild wake of OSU's biggest victory over the Sun Devils in the 33-game series.

"We still work hard every day but now we expect to win. We're not one-hit wonders."

The Beavers have won four straight games for the first time in three years and four Pac-10 Conference games for the first time since the 2000 season, when they won six in a row.

They have raised their league standing to 4-2, tied for third with Oregon, and bumped their overall record to 6-3 - one win away from becoming bowl eligible with four regular-season games remaining.

"We know we need seven wins," said Yvenson Bernard, the junior tailback who missed the USC game with a bad ankle, described himself at about 70 percent and still scored the first two touchdowns against Arizona State.

"We worry about becoming bowl eligible but our goal is to just keep winning."

Arizona State, which had lost its first three Pac-10 games but was on a two-game win streak, seemingly didn't have a chance.

"With a win like the one we had over USC, guys can get big-headed and don't work hard," said Matt Moore, the OSU quarterback who sustained a bruised left shoulder in the second quarter but still managed to pass for 282 yards and a touchdown, and rush for 44 more and another score.

"We made sure we stayed the same team, that we kept grinding, kept going and stayed the course."

That course ripped through the heart of the Sun Devils, who remain a win shy of being bowl eligible at 5-4 (2-4 in the Pac-10).

The Beavers fell on ASU like the hard rain that fell on them, scoring the first 17 points of the game and piling up 31 first-half points - the most in a Pac-10 game for them in three years.

"That was a good Arizona State team," OSU coach Mike Riley said, "but we just got on it, scoring on the first drive, making some defensive plays and getting the momentum early."

For the seventh time in nine games this season, the Beavers scored on their first possession - all touchdowns.

The glitches were few and far between, the big one a 15-play, 93-yard drive that yielded only a field goal.

But while the defense was intercepting two ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter passes, sacking him four times and recording 10 tackles for loss, the OSU offense scored on each of its first five possessions.

Fueling the offensive surge was a sterling third-down conversion rate of 53 percent (9-of-17).

"We were three-for-three on third downs in that first drive," Moore said. "That's huge. Those just kill a defense."

Bernard, pressed into more work because backup tailback Clinton Polk was winged with an ankle injury, scored on runs of three and one yards. Alexis Serna kicked a 51-yard field goal - his third over 50 yards this season - as OSU rolled to a 17-0 first-quarter lead.

Keegan Herring ran 40 yards for a score three minutes into the second quarter - ASU's only touchdown of the game.

Moore threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Anthony Wheat-Brown and Moore ran five yards for a touchdown before Jesse Ainsworth provided the Sun Devils with their final points of the game - a 32-yard field goal - as OSU broke for halftime with a 31-10 advantage.

With 30 minutes to play, the Beavers said they still were wary of Arizona State. Arizona State apparently wasn't.

"We are not explosive enough on offense when we fall behind," ASU coach Dirk Koetter said. "We're not explosive enough to come back and we have to rely on our running game and defense."

Serna kicked two more field goals and a bungled Arizona State punt led to OSU reserve tailback Tony Carrasco's eight-yard touchdown run with less than three minutes to play.

While the Beavers held firm in their one-game-at-a-time approach, especially with next Saturday's visit to UCLA where they have won just twice since 1971, there was no holding back their fast-rising confidence.

"We've proved we can play football," Bernard said. "Last week was not a fluke."

"And we didn't have any hangovers from the last game," Riley said.

But the party, it continues.