What a heartbreaker for Arizona.
Saturday against BYU, the Wildcats found themselves down 14-0 in the first quarter. Following a 74 minute weather delay, Arizona stormed back to lead by 10 points in the fourth.
But Kalani Sitake’s Cougars pulled yet another rabbit out of their hat, tying the contest before the end of regulation and then winning 33-27 in double overtime.
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In a mere matter of minutes, Arizona went from potentially earning an impressive, statetment victory over unbeaten BYU to suffering one of the season’s worst collapses thus far.
“Obviously, it’s incredibly disappointing,” Arizona head coach Brent Brennan told reporters after the game. “We’re down 14 points, make some plays. We rally back, we come out of the weather delay and really dig in. The interesting thing about the weather delay is that it happened (and) there’s still three quarters left football to play. So there’s so much football left, and I thought our team did a great job of answering the call in that moment.
“The hard part is at the end of the game, we had a chance to end it offensively, and we had a chance to end it defensively, and neither side of the ball did.”
The Wildcats were held to a field goal in their first opportunity of overtime, which BYU then matched. The Cougars would proceed to score a touchdown afterward, followed by their defense keeping Arizona out of the end zone to clinch the win.
In the third quarter, Noah Fifita had led the Wildcats down to the BYU 5-yard line, but fourth down pressure from Tausili Akana made him uncomfortable and helped force an interception to Isaiah Glasker.
When including overtime, Arizona managed just 13 points from five red zone trips, allowing the Cougars enough wiggle room for a comeback.
“I think it’s a combination of BYU being a good football team, and I think it’s also a combination of just us not executing on the level we need to when we get down to red zone,” Brennan said. “And obviously we had an opportunity to score a touchdown in overtime and it gets called back (on a holding penalty). Those things we can’t do if you’re going to win big-time football games like tonight was.”
Despite the brutal finish, Brennan still found a number of positive takeaways from the contest, including Arizona ending BYU’s streak of scoring in 32 consecutive quarters.
“I thought there were moments there where Noah was playing great football, and we’re making plays, and we found some run game,” Brennan said. “People haven’t run the ball on them like that. I thought that was a positive. I thought our defense played their tails off, held them scoreless for two quarters. That hadn’t happened in 30-plus quarters. So there’s a lot of things to be excited about.”
With the loss, Arizona is now 4-2 on the season and 1-2 in Big 12 play
“I know we didn’t do it, but we were right there knocking on the door,” Brennan said. “As disheartening as tonight was, to me there’s a lot of positive in that game, and we need to be excited about that too. Like, I want us to be pissed off about how that thing ended. We should be, but we should be excited about the fact that we stood toe to toe with one of the most physical teams in our conference and slugged it out into overtime.”
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