Tag: arizona football

Arizona inexplicably opened its Colorado game with an onside kick… that failed miserably

Arizona, WYD?

There are bold ways to open a college football game, and then there’s whatever Arizona’s logic was when it opened its Week 8 matchup against Colorado with an onside kick — and one that failed miserably and gave the Buffaloes an early lead.

Yes, you read that right.

Usually reserved for the end of a game when a team desperately needs to get the ball back, the Wildcats, after winning the coin toss and deferring, inexplicably opted to start with an onside kick rather than a traditional kickoff to start the game. Arizona senior kicker Tyler Loop kicked the ball 11 yards to the Wildcats own 46-yard line.

The problem with the execution of this opening play was that Colorado recovered the ball. And just five plays later, the Buffaloes found the end zone with a one-yard touchdown run from Isaiah Augustave.

The only way this could have gone worse for Arizona is if Colorado returned the ball for a touchdown. Not great.

Obviously, college football fans were totally baffled by the rare choice to start the game with an onside kick.

How college football Twitter reacted to Arizona opening its Colorado game with an onside kick

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How do Arizona football players practice safely in the heat?

Arizona athletes are facing a big challenge with the heat.

With the temperature routinely over triple digits, football players and high school athletes in Arizona are having to be smart with their off-season workouts.

While so much focus during the offseason for football players is injury prevention, in particular concussions, there are other concerns as well. Practicing and playing in the heat in one of the hottest places in the United States is certainly a challenge.

But it is a challenge that Arizona and other states are attempting to take on.

Some football programs are doing their offseason workouts indoors, with the plan to gradually acclimate to outdoor practice. This is one common sense way for athletes to train in the heat of summer.

And when formal practice starts for programs in late August, there are protocols in place from the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA). AZCentral reports that the rules in place attempt to limit the exposure of athletes to extreme temperatures:

“For the first five days of formal practices, there can only be one practice a day. Practice time shouldn’t exceed more than three hours in one day. In addition to the practice, a one-hour maximum walk-through is permitted during the first five days. Walk-throughs are defined as having no contact with other individuals and without sleds, dummies, or shields.”

These are solid protocols not just for Arizona, but for any part of the country where extreme temperatures can peak in August.

Dr. Jimmy Nguyen, the medical director at Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center (Gilbert, Arizona), said that being smart while training in the heat is important.

And there is plenty of heat forecasted for Arizona, with 116 degrees expected in Phoenix on Saturday.

Avoiding practice between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., Nguyen said, is important as those are peak temperature times. Hydration is important and not just during practice.

Proper hydration should begin 24 hours before an outdoor activity in the heat to prevent cramping and injury.

“The biggest signs for heat exhaustion is people will start having increased thirst, they’ll start feeling nauseous, getting headache, feeling weakness and fatigue,” Nguyen said according to AZCentral.

“During that time, people need to loosen up their clothing, go to a cooler area, drink water. If those symptoms don’t improve, they need to seek medical attention. Things we worry about when they progress to heat stroke is when they get confusion, whether they become unresponsive. That’s a medical emergency and they need to come to the emergency department immediately.”

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Ohio State football offers edge defender

Ohio State offers edge defender #GoBucks

Ohio State football is finding a ton of talent at their camps and it appears it found another future star in T.K. Cunningham. He is currently an unranked edge in the class of 2027, but his ranking is obviously due to his youth. The Georgia native already has a lengthy list of suitors and the Buckeyes like what they saw enough to throw their hat in the ring.

Cunningham already boasts impressive size at 6-foot, 5-inches and 230 pounds. Ohio State will be competing with a number of schools for his services and he already has a ton of offers all over the country including out West including from Arizona and Colorado.

Former USC defensive lineman transfers to Arizona

This time, the transfer portal goes from L.A. to Tucson, not in the opposite direction.

The USC Trojans have received a number of football players in the transfer portal from the Arizona Wildcats in recent years. This time, however, a Trojan is moving to Tucson to play for the Cats. Stanley Ta’ofo’ou wants a chance to get playing time, and Arizona is his choice. Happily, he won’t be playing against the Trojans due to Arizona moving to the Big 12 while USC shifts to the Big Ten Conference this season.

We noted that Ta’ofo’ou was out of alignment with the 2024 USC roster because “USC opted for smaller, quicker linemen under Alex Grinch. This strategy regularly saw Stanley Ta’ufo’ou (6-2 / 275) lining up at defensive tackle and De’jon Benton (6-1 / 270) at nose tackle. The roster turnover has started as USC looks to get more stout along the defensive line. The Trojans will often be facing 12, 13 and 22 personnel in the Big Ten with the plan to run the ball right at the Trojans. USC is seeking help in the transfer portal.”

The fit might be better in Tucson under first-year head coach Brent Brennan. We wish Stanley the best in Arizona.

https://x.com/mzenitz/status/1795838574061068754

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USC football’s Pac-12 greatest hits — Arizona

USC won a game over Arizona’s head coach nearly four decades ago. That Arizona coach then moved to USC.

The USC-Arizona football series hasn’t had many memorable encounters in the Pac-12 era. One was last year, with the Trojans winning a multi-overtime thriller. However, USC did not have a season which magnified the significance of that victory. It was merely an interesting footnote in a failed year. USC and Arizona simply haven’t had many high-stakes collisions, the kinds of games which linger in the public memory. If you were to choose a significant USC-Arizona Pac-12 game, one choice rises above the others.

We wrote about the 1986 USC-Arizona game, which was ugly and poorly played, but which was won by the Trojans and therefore created a chain reaction which influenced the next several years for both schools:

“(Larry) Smith’s 9-3 Arizona team in 1986 might have finished 11-1 had it handled USC. As it was, the Wildcats fell short of their goal. They finished the season in the top 15 of the polls, a great achievement for the program relative to its barren history, but lacked the prestigious bowl game to show for it.

“When USC fired coach Ted Tollner after the 1986 season, guess who was willing to spring from Tucson — and was offered the USC job? Yep, Larry Smith, who promptly made three straight Rose Bowls at USC before his tenure quickly lost steam in the early 1990s.

“If Arizona had beaten USC in 1986, Tollner still would have been fired … but the Wildcats might have taken a very different turn. This is the USC-Arizona game which still contains an element of fascination many years later. USC’s victory didn’t lead to any riches in 1986 … but it did in 1987, 1988, and 1989.”

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Arizona transfer DL Bill Norton to visit Texas for Orange-White game

Texas is targeting another former Arizona Wildcat in the transfer portal.

Texas’ new linebackers coach Johnny Nansen is targeting another former Arizona Wildcat in the transfer portal. Continue reading “Arizona transfer DL Bill Norton to visit Texas for Orange-White game”

Arizona DT Tiaoalii Savea commits to Texas

Texas found its defensive tackle commit on Tuesday morning.

Texas has its defensive tackle commit in the transfer portal. Arizona defensive tackle Tiaoalii Savea committed to the Longhorns on Tuesday morning capping an eventful offseason for the unit.

Savea is what Texas needs at the position. He’s a veteran player with multiple years of experience and the size to aid the Longhorns in the interior of defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski’s scheme.

The 6-foot-4, 305-pound player from Las Vegas logged three seasons at Arizona. In his junior campaign in 2023, Savea compiled 1.5 sacks and 21 total tackles for the Wildcats. He is a much needed get for a defense that not only lacks experience but production at defensive tackle outside of Alfred Collins and Vernon Broughton.

Undoubtedly, the familiarity between Savea and current Texas linebackers coach and co-defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen played a role in the move. Nansen worked as the defensive coordinator for Arizona last season and probably has an in-depth scouting report of the skilled player. That Nansen would be in favor of the move would probably speak to Savea’s work ethic and culture fit.

Texas will not be as good as it was at defensive tackle last season after two elite NFL draft prospects departed at the position. Nevertheless, it should be good enough to compete for a playoff berth with Savea added to the fold.

Jedd Fisch preached loyalty to his Arizona players; now he’s paying a price for it

If Fisch assumed his Arizona players would follow him en masse to Seattle, he made a bad calculation.

One of the core values Jedd Fisch tried to communicate to his Arizona football players over the past few seasons was loyalty. Fisch made that an important part of his messaging to the Wildcats. Therefore, when Fisch took the open head coaching job with the Washington Huskies, he probably assumed his players would follow him to Montlake out of a sense of loyalty. It wasn’t the worst assumption to make. Plenty of us who follow college football know that in many cases, players play for a coach more than a university.

We saw this at USC when Tackett Curtis and Domani Jackson transferred out of the program rather than play for the new incoming defensive coaching staff. Alex Grinch and especially Donte Williams forged strong relationships with some recruits. Those recruits wanted to play for those coaches, not other ones. This is true at other schools as well.

However, at the University of Arizona, Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan wanted to be Wildcats in the same way Miller Moss wants to be a Trojan. Some players really do play for the school, not the coach. Fisch is not retaining nearly as many players in Seattle as he hoped he would. Arizona is not losing players the way it feared it would.

See what’s being said about Arizona’s roster holding up surprisingly well due to loyalty — to a school, not a coach:

USC will not face Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan at Washington next year

USC won’t have to play Noah Fifita or Tetairoa McMillan in 2024 as members of the Washington Huskies. That’s #B1G.

Arizona Wildcat football fans have a lot to celebrate today. The Pac-12 Freshman Offensive Player of the Year, quarterback Noah Fifita, and sophomore Second Team All-Pac-12 selection Tetairoa McMillan will be returning to Tucson to play for new head coach Brent Brennan in 2024. Fifita and McMillan explain in a tweet below from Arizona Football, “Tucson we have unfinished business. We runnin’ it back!”

This means that Trojan fans, Lincoln Riley, and D’Anton Lynn might also be celebrating today with the Wildcats. These prime Arizona players will not follow Jedd Fisch, the head coach who recruited them both out of Servite High School in Anaheim, to Washington next season. USC is scheduled to play its (soon-to-be) former Pac-12 opponent in a conference game in the Big Ten on November 2, 2024, in Seattle.

247Sports shared a conversation with Les Fifita, Noah’s father, in which he explains that McMillan and his son had thoughts of leaving, but it was not where everyone was expecting.

“We’ve known Kalen DeBoer for a long time and he loved Noah when he was at Fresno State,” [Les Fifita] said. “He recruited him hard when Noah was at Servite and they wanted both boys at Alabama.

“It’s ’Bama, we had to listen. But, end of the day, both kids felt like they had unfinished business here. Plus, it’s a family here — it really is. We want to keep this thing together and we know the whole team couldn’t go to ’Bama just like the whole team wasn’t being recruited to Washington. This is the best move for everyone and, with Noah and TMac and the core staying, we think we got a great shot to keep everyone else here as well.”

The Wildcats have their dynamic passing duo back for their first year in the Big 12. Fisch will continue to search for a replacement for Heisman runner-up Michael Penix, who is off to the NFL, and Will Rogers, the transfer from Mississippi State who entered the portal again when DeBoer left Washington. Most importantly, the Trojans will not face the trio of Fisch, Fifita and McMillan in 2024, a combination that took USC and Riley to triple overtime last October in the Coliseum.

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Can USC grab another Arizona football transfer? This time it might be harder

USC has pulled a number of transfers from Arizona in recent years, but this new cycle might be more difficult.

The USC Trojans have grabbed a number of players from the Arizona Wildcats in the transfer portal in recent years. Dorian Singer, Christian Roland-Wallace, Kyon Barrs, and other players have made their way from Tucson to Los Angeles. Now, after Jedd Fisch left for Washington, a lot of Arizona players have entered the transfer portal.

USC could use a few of them.

Roll Tide Wire made a list of Arizona players Alabama could use. USC should want to pursue these same players. We’ll look at one of them: offensive lineman Raymond Pulido.

Roll Tide Wire offered this overview:

“Before signing with Arizona, Raymond Pulido was committed to Alabama for four months. The native of Apple Valley, California has entered the transfer portal after one season in Tuscon. With Pulido being from the West Coast, he was recruited by Washington’s coaching staff coming out of high school. Therefore, it makes sense for Alabama’s new coaching staff to pursue Pulido.

“He saw some playing time as a freshman for the Wildcats. With Alabama losing starting offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor to the transfer portal, it makes sense to bring in someone who has some familiarity with the program and some experience playing at the Power Five level.”

It will be harder for USC to get these transfers since Washington, Alabama, and Ohio State are all in the market for a lot of players in the portal. We will see what the Trojans can do.

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