Arizona Football Talk: Arizona vs. KSU Prediction

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 (2-0) is close to kicking off its third game of the season against Kansas State in the final non-conference game of the season. Although the two teams are members of the Big 12, this matchup was scheduled years in advance and couldn’t be reworked when conference realignment happened across college athletics.

In the first two games of the year, Arizona has been clicking on all cylinders winning by 34 points over Hawaii and smashing Weber State 48-3 with quarterback Noah Fifita going 17 of 22 for 373 yards and racking up five passing touchdowns in the game.

As of right now, Fifita is sitting on 50 career touchdown passes, which puts him fourth all-time in program history and one touchdown ahead of Anu Solomon. He is seven touchdowns behind Khalil Tate for third all-time.

Arizona was able to control the groove of the game and even held both opponents to under 10 points and didn’t allow a touchdown.

It was the first time the Wildcats’ defense has held back-to-back opponents out of the end zone since the 2010 season when UA beat Toledo 41-2 and then came home and later came back home delivered a 52-6 win over the Citadel.

The other Wildcats across the field in Kansas State (1-2) have had a different start to the season with losses to Iowa State (24-21) and Army (24-21) with the only win coming in a nail-biter against North Dakota (38-35) where KSU had to score on the final possession to win.

Last season, Arizona struggled in the second half against Kansas State getting smacked 17-0, which led to UA falling 31-7 on the road.

In that game, quarterback Avery Johnsn had his way with the defense rushing for 110 yards and passing for 156 while putting up two passing touchdowns.

Arizona will have to fix the issues from a season ago and play high-level football in order to come away from Friday night with a win.

Game Prediction

• Arizona: 31

• Kansas State: 17

Reason

• When you look at the way the two programs are paying, Arizona is rolling even though the Wildcats haven’t played the best of opponents. Still, UA has its offense clicking and the defense hasn’t given up a touchdown yet this season

• Meanwhile, Kansas State is entering the game with injuries on both sides of the football and has seen Johnson struggle in two of the three games this season.