Arizona head coach Rich Rodriguez, one of the fathers and architects of the spread offense, won double digit games three times at West Virginia, failed miserably at Michigan, lost the Gator bowl three times in four tries, and is 6-4 in his second year coaching the Wildcats. Last year his squad missed a couple of chances early against the Ducks, wound up losing 49-0 on national TV in the conference opener for both squads. A 3-0 start had fans buzzing, especially after a Week 2 win over #18 Oklahoma State.
RichRod strikes back: resurrecting his career after a disastrous stint at Michigan, former Mountaineer head man Rodriguez has brought an uncompromising attitude to Arizona but mixed results. The team’s emergence may come in the third year: Austin Hill has vowed to return for his senior season, and Rodriguez has recruited a 4-star quarterback and five wide receivers. Five-star cornerback Jalen Tabor visited last weekend.
Year one ended with a come-from-behind win over Nevada in the New Mexico Bowl, an 8-5 finish that most folks called progress. This season the ‘Cats again started 3-0, but the wins were Northern Arizona, UNLV, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, racking up numbers and stats against three bottom feeders. In PAC-12 play the three victories came over Utah, Colorado and Cal. The team lost by a touchdown or less to UCLA and USC, but they were blown out 31-13 in Week 4 by the Washington Huskies, back when the Dawgs were still healthy.
Last week Rodrigues’ second edition lost a heartbreaker to Washington State, 24-17. Connor Halliday threw a go-ahead 25-yard touchdown pass to Isiah Meyers with just over two minutes to play. B.J. Denker and the Wildcat offense answered with a drive, quickly working down to the 13 with no timeouts left, but Denker’s 4th and 4 pass to wide receiver Samijie Grant fell incomplete.
Ka’Deem Carey ran for 132 yards in the loss, and Ken Griffey’s son Trey, a freshman wide receiver, saw his first action of his college career, aiding an injury-depleted wide receiver corps with 4 catches for 45 yards. At 6-3, 190 Griffey is one to watch against the Ducks–as the fourth wide receiver in the spread he’ll be matched up against 5-11, 168-lb. Troy Hill or a safety.
Carey is the workhorse. After 1929 yards and 23 tds last season the 5-10, 196-lb. junior running back is a Maxwell and Doak Walker Award semi-finalist this season, with 1353 yards and 12 tds, 5.6 yards a carry. He isn’t a breakaway burner but a grinder, a steady back who runs inside the tackles about 65% of the time. His long run of the year was a 58-yard touchdown run against UNLV after sitting out game one for disciplinary reasons. He’s gone over a hundred yards in 13 straight games and 17 of the last 18 of his career while rushing for over 3700 yards. The Ducks held him to 79 last year but Arizona got behind early.
He’s aided this year by the dual-threat presence of Denker, the frightfully skinny but effective 6-3, 173-lb. senior quarterback. Denker has run for 709 yards and 11 touchdowns, passed for 1888 and 12 scores. He’s been intercepted just four times but sometimes suffers from an erratic arm, most dangerous when containment breaks down in the pocket. The Wildcat offensive line goes 305, 309, 261, 280, and 288 from left to right. They’ve allowed just 14 sacks all year, pacing an offense that scores 33.0 points a game and pounds out 263.7 per contest on the ground, good for 13th in the country.
The relentless ground game could be the Wildcats’ best option Saturday on the Arizona Stadium field turf. The wide receiver corps has been depleted by injuries to Austin Hill (torn ACL, recently cleared for practice) and David Richards. Only four wide receivers caught a pass against the Cougars. Game time temperature is supposed to be 63 degrees with a 50% chance of rain.
Defensively, the Wildcats have been hurt by even more injuries. Linebacker Jake Fischer has been in and out of the lineup with a bad knee and missed the win over Cal. Safety Tra’Mayne Bondurant went down with a concussion against Utah and Jared Tevis hurt his knee against UCLA. All three are expected to play against the Ducks, a good thing, since Tevis is third on the team in tackles with 62, and Bondurant leads in interceptions with 4.
Arizona has just 15 takeaways on defense all season, and 18 sacks. They got to Halliday four times last week, but most of those were coverage sacks with no one open in the pattern. If Mariota is closer to full mobility this week, he should be able to exploit the Cat secondary, which has given 224.4 yards a game this season, and 16 td passes. The defense’s rankings and stats were heavily padded by the three creampuff games to start the year: before conference play began, they ranked 9th in scoring defense and 23rd in yards allowed, numbers that quickly declined in a 3-4 league slate. Cody Kessler torched them for 297 yards through the air, Halliday 319.
After the loss to Mike Leach and the Cougs, the Arizona Daily Wildcat student newspaper called the team “beaten and lifeless.” At 6-4, they can still go to a good bowl, and the greater likelihood is that they will rally and seek an emotional peak against the #5 Ducks, especially after last season’s one-sided loss.
Denker and Carey are always dangerous, and the Arizona desert has been a chamber of horrors for Oregon in recent seasons. In 2005 Kellen Clemens broke his ankle. In 2007 Dennis Dixon tore all three ligaments in his knee. In 2009, the Ducks escaped with a 44-41 victory in double overtime, getting a late fourth quarter drive to tie when Nate Costa scooped an errant extra point snap off the turf, winning when Jeremiah Masoli scored on a keeper in the second extra period, sending the red-clad, amped, night-game, read-to-rush-the-field crowd home in disappointment.
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