What Utah's Kyle Whittingham said ahead of Arizona State game

Utes head coach addressed the media before taking on the Sun Devils at the end of the week

Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham walks along the sidelines during the second quarter against the West Virginia Mountaineers at Milan Puskar Stadium. | Ben Queen-Imagn Images

Coming off a bye, the Utah football team returns to action Saturday for a showdown against last season's Big 12 champions.

Needless to say, the Utes' upcoming home game against a talented Arizona State squad will be quite the litmus test for Kyle Whittingham's program. With College Football Playoff and conference title race implications at stake, the Week 7 contest from Rice-Eccles Stadium should be telling of how far each team can go the rest of the way, as they try to keep pace with Texas Tech in perhaps the most competitive Power Four league in the country.

"If you want to win the conference, you got to stand toe to toe with the big boys and come away with wins," Whittingham said during his weekly press conference. "That's the bottom line."

Here's more of what Whittingham had to say ahead of Saturday's anticipated matchup:

On whether any of the injuries sustained in the West Virginia game were season-ending

"I should've addressed that in my opening statements. None of those injuries were season-ending. And so, just going forward, you'll just check the ... availability report on, I think it comes out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and maybe even Saturday; there's a lot of them. Anyway, check those and that'll tell you the status. But no, fortunately, not season-ending. We'll see who we have available this week and who we don't."

On whether backup QB Byrd Ficklin will take a redshirt year

"We're very pleased with what Byrd's done, I can tell you that much right now. I would say that there is not a concerted effort right now to redshirt Byrd if we're going to play him ... well, if he's needed obviously, and then any experience that we can get him. I think the road we've been going down is the road we'll continue to go down. And like I said, he's really made of his snaps and has looked very poised and very in control when he's been out there. For a true freshman, he seems to be very mature and handles his business well."

On Arizona State's performance in crunch time

"[They're] just making plays when they need to be made. They've been in some tight games this year. Although they lost the Mississippi State game, that was a one score game. But they have done a good job of pulling those games out and being on the winning end of those. All I can say is that when the time comes at the end of the game and things get tough, they make plays."

On what's impressed him about Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham

"How he stayed the course. Because he had some rough spots the first year, and things didn't go real well. I think that was the year we beat him [55-3] his first year. And he also had a few other rough, rough games that year. But I've talked to him a few times. We've conversed and he's picked my brain a little bit and I just say, 'Hey if you believe in what you're doing, keep doing it. Don't panic, just keep doing it.' He's been doing it, and you can see the progress they've made."

On what he hopes to see from the Utes when they face the Sun Devils

"Continue to play consistently and finish games. That was our big problem in the Texas Tech game a couple weeks back; we didn't finish very well. We're in the game all the way to the mid-fourth quarter, and then didn't do much there the rest of the way. So that's something we need to do, is play the full 60 minutes."

"And I think that if we can continue to win the turnover margin — the one game we lost it in dramatic fashion, is the game we lost, and so that's something that we got to do. I think we're 12th in the conference right now in turnover ratio, which is not good enough. We're usually up in the top third of the league in that [category], so that's something that's got to hopefully change as well. We got to do a better job of that."