There was a lot on the line for the Arizona Wildcats yesterday for both the team and Head Coach Rich Rodriguez. If the Cats were to win that game and have UCLA lose they would get a second shot at Oregon in the Pac-12. Well, Friday night in Santa Clara the Cats get that rematch with Oregon. Or should I say Oregon gets the rematch with Arizona since the Ducks are the ones who lost the first time? Either way, this will set up as a great match up.
On Friday, the Wildcats got the victory that they desperately wanted because they had not beat the Sun Devils in the last three years and made Rich Rod a very happy man. He finally beat his good friend Todd Graham and quieted the fans that were complaining about his inability to beat Arizona State. The Cats did not really come out and set the tempo or try to impose their will on the Devils. Neither team really did. Being in attendance at the game I started thinking that neither team wanted to win the game. Now, in reality, we all know that is not true, but based on the play that I observed it looked like both teams had eaten to much turkey the day before.
The only person on the Wildcat offensive team doing really anything was their quarterback, Anu Solomon. Out of the 129 total yards for the Cats in the first half, Solomon had 116 of those yards attached to him. The running game was going nowhere for the Cats. They had a grand total of 13 yards thanks to -39 yards for Solomon. It offset any yards that their great running back Nick Wilson had. Wilson had 54 yards at the half. That was all about to change in the second half though.
Defensively, Scooby Wright was doing everything he could to hold the Devils at bay. He had 12 tackles by the end of the third quarter and four of those tackles were for a loss. He was getting pressure on Taylor Kelly and those Sun Devil skill players. If Wright is not the defensive player of the year in the Pac-12 I don't know who is. This linebacker is the real deal and he plays hard and with a chip on his shoulder.
In the second half of the game the Cats really busted off some big plays, especially on the ground. Nick Wilson, the Wildcat running back, had a total of 178 yards on 24 carries, which also included a devastating run of 72 yards that killed the momentum that the Devils were trying to recover and use to take the game over. Wilson was amazing for the Cats. When they needed a big run, a run to keep the clock going, Wilson was the man for the Cats.
Getting to the end of the game was a bit of an adventure though for Arizona. They had a two score lead with about seven minutes left in the game and they let the Devils get some big plays and into the end zone to cut the lead to one possession. I started to wonder again if the Wildcats were trying to give this one away. Sometimes learning how to win with a young team is one of those growing pains a team goes through and that was evident on Friday with the Cats in waning minutes of the game.
Once the game was decided and Arizona stopped the Devils on the final fourth down of the game, the celebration was on in Tucson. The students stormed the field chanting " U of A, U of A, U of A!" and the humbled Sun Devils were getting off the field as quickly as possible. As Rich Rod was leaving the field, his wife or son came up to him and asked, "Did you know UCLA lost?" Rodriguez said. "That made me bounce a little more in the air." he replied.
He better have that bounce in his step this week because the Oregon Ducks will and they have unfinished business with the Wildcats. Game on in Santa Clara Pac-12 fans.
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