Arizona Football Talk: Arizona on the Rise

Hutchison has been covering Arizona for the last seven years with his coverage spanning all-across UA’s campus from football and men’s basketball to Title IX sports. Plus, with so many former Wildcats playing at the next level in their prospective sports there will be moments where he will take a deep dive into the Cats excelling outside of Tucson.

Arizona wanted to get back on the right track after an underwhelming first season under Brent Brennan, where the team finished 4-8 and missed a bowl game despite preseason high expectations.

Well, after changes were made to the coaching staff and the roster, Brennan seems to have the Wildcats moving in the right direction with the team starting the year with 3-straight impressive wins over Hawaii, Weber State and Kansas State.

Friday night in Tucson was a Wildcats brawl as Arizona (3-0, 1-0) faced off against Kansas State in the final non-conference game of the regular season. UA started hot, jumping out to an impressive 17-3 lead over KSU, but a few missed field goals and holding calls caused the team some points right before half.

Despite the great first half, Arizona saw its lead vanish fast with KSU (1-3, 0-2) breaking off a 75-yard touchdown run and then scoring another touchdown after a blocked punt. From that point on, it was a defensive grinder with UA prevailing 23-17 over Kansas State.

One of the most important drives of the game came in the fourth quarter with just over 12 minutes when UA marched 58 yards downfield, eating up 7:30 of the clock on 14 plays, but had to settle for a 41-yard field goal by Michael Salgado-Medina to put the team up by six points.

Although it wasn’t pretty, Arizona controlled the line of scrimmage by racking up 235 yards rushing on 43 carries. Leading the charge for the Wildcats was running back Ismail Mahdi, who totaled 189 yards while averaging 8.6 yards per rushing attempt.

It was Mahdi that put up all the rushing yards, however quarterback Noah Fifita was able to find the end zone twice with his legs. Fifita managed to rush for 48 yards 15 rushing attempts.

Arizona could’ve had a more productive day on the offensive side of the ball, but penalties hurt the Wildcats’ offense with the team collecting 7 flags for 56 yards with most of the issues coming on the offensive line with holding calls.

Not only did Fifita put up 48 yards on the ground, he was able to go 16 of 33 totaling 178 passing yards. Again, holding calls caused that number to be lower than it was and took a touchdown pass off the board for the team.

Outside of the 75-yard rushing touchdown by KSU, Arizona’s defense controlled the line of scrimmage and had a dominating performance, holding Kansas State to 105 yards on 24 carries.

Meanwhile, the secondary was lights out for Arizona and held quarterback Avery Johnson to 88 yards while going 12 of 29 on his passing attempts. Plus, Johnson wasn’t able to get his wheels going and was forced into (-16) yards rushing.

It was a 180-degree turnaround for the defense that struggled last season against Johnson who rushed for 110 yards and passed for 156 while scoring two touchdowns.

The change at defensive coordinator with Danny Gonzales taking over seems to be paying off for Arizona. Gonzales was able to mix things up all-game-long against KSU and put the opponent into situations where you knew exactly what they were going to do.

The final score of a 6-point win doesn’t show how much Arizona dominated this game.

When you take a deep dive into the stats, UA had 219 more yards of total offense, had 13 more first downs, ran 26 more plays and over 13 more minutes of time of possession.

It was the little things with penalties, a blocked punt and two missed field goals that managed to keep Kansas State in the game til the end.

So, has Arizona improved as a football team?