Arizona was looking to get back on track and head into its second bye week of the season with some confidence. However, it was another heartbreaker in Houston and the Wildcats fell to the Cougars for the second straight week 31-28.<\/p>\n
While the offense may have improved from last week, the story of the day was the inability for the Wildcats to stop the run.<\/p>\n
Here are the grades for the offense, defense, special teams, and coaching following the loss to Houston:<\/p>\n
Noah Fifita and the offense started the day off on fire. Slipping away from what would\u2019ve been a sack, Fifita stepped up and threw a dart to Tre Spivey and he did the rest. Taking it to the house from 70 yards out put Arizona on top to start the day.<\/p>\n
On the next drive, UA marched down the field inside Houston territory. Fifita threw his second touchdown of the day, this time to Luke Wysong.<\/p>\n
It took some fancy feet and yards after the catch to get in but Arizona\u2019s offense continued the hot start.<\/p>\n
However, the offense started to stall out. Punting on back to back drives, the offense eventually found its rhythm again. On nine plays, Arizona was back into Houston territory.<\/p>\n
Then came a crucial fourth down call where Arizona decided to go for it. On a read option play, Fifita handed it off to Kedrick Reescano and he was stopped short of the line to gain.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats did not see the ball again until 5:56 left in the third quarter, outside of a drive to end the half that ended in a sack. Being down by 14 points, this was a must score drive for the offense.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the drive ended in points. On a 13 play, six minute drive, Spivey ran it in from three yards out. While the drive may have ended in points, it took a lot of clock that Arizona ended up needing at the end of the game.<\/p>\n
Down only seven now, the Wildcats offense had to find a way to march down the field to try and tie the game. On another long drive that lasted just under seven minutes, Arizona found the end zone.<\/p>\n
The Houston native, Reescano ran it in from two yards out, and Arizona tied the game at 28. That was the last time the offense saw the field in the game as Houston\u2019s offense held the ball for the rest of the game and kicked a game winning field goal.<\/p>\n
Fifita finished the game going 24-26 through the air for two touchdown passes and 269 yards. By far his most efficient game of the season.<\/p>\n
Javin Whatley led the team in catches with seven for 42 yards. It was Spivey that led the team in catching yards with 70 on his touchdown catch on run.<\/p>\n
Ismail Mahdi led the team in rushing yards with 42 yards on six carries. Overall the offense finished with 381 yards of total offense. The offense had a good day statistically, but it is still not enough to help get the Wildcats the win.<\/p>\n
This was a bad day at the office for the Wildcats defense. There was little to nothing that went right for the defense.<\/p>\n
Allowing nearly 400 yards of total offense with 232 yards on the ground and 164 yards through the air is not a winning recipe. Arizona did not have a sack on the day and it did not force any turnovers.<\/p>\n
Deshawn McKnight had a solo tackle for loss, and Tia Savea teamed up with Chase Kennedy for half a tackle for loss each. Max Harris led the Wildcats in tackles with 13.<\/p>\n
The defense allowed Houston to go three for three when it went inside the red zone. The Cougars also had drives of 6:38 and 9:04 which both ended in touchdowns.<\/p>\n
Houston went 8-14 on third down and 2-2 on fourth down. There were also two pass interference penalties on the Arizona secondary.<\/p>\n
One thing that stood out for the Wildcats was the missed tackles on poor tackling form. The Cougars were able to get four to five extra yards due to poor arm tackles or going for ankle tackles.<\/p>\n
It was nowhere near a clean enough game for the Wildcats. In back to back weeks the inability to stop the run has been the achilles heel.<\/p>\n
The special teams unit did not have a lot of opportunities to make plays today. The lone mistake came on an Ian Wagner kickoff where he kicked it out of bounds.<\/p>\n
Isaac Lovison did have a punt that went out of bounds at the Houston four yard line.<\/p>\n
Seth Doege does deserve credit today because he put an offensive gameplan that put Arizona in a position to win the game. It allowed for Fifita to be efficient and it gave targets to nearly every receiver.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there should\u2019ve been more looks to a guy like Spivey, but Fifita saw what he saw and he was efficient for the game. This was also a weird game where the run game did not seem to be as strong as it usually is, yet the Wildcats still ran for 112 yards.<\/p>\n
The most frustrating part of the game clearly came on the defensive side of the ball. Numerous missed tackles, an inability to bring the quarterback down, and not being able to get off the field on third and fourth down.<\/p>\n
It seemed as though Danny Gonzales nor Brent Brennan had no response to the run game. This is frustrating because it was the main downfall in last week\u2019s loss, and it looks like no adjustments were made.<\/p>\n
There is something missing right now for Arizona that is preventing it from winning these close games. Killer instinct? Missed opportunities? Lack of execution? All have come into play in the Wildcats\u2019 losses this season.<\/p>\n
Outside of not being able to get off the field, it felt like the Wildcats could not find a way to put away the Cougars early.<\/p>\n
Before the missed fourth down attempt, Arizona had two drives to try and go up 21-7 or even 17-7. Instead, it\u2019s a misread by Fifita on fourth down and in turn it led to a 14 point tied game.<\/p>\n
Arizona now goes into the bye week with more questions than answers and there is going to need to be a major shift in mindset before the road trip to Boulder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona was looking to get back on track and head into its second bye week of the season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4938,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-10379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-arizona-football","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}