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.
The show goes on. pic.twitter.com/oVwMvCNTx1
— Arizona Football (@ArizonaFBall) January 20, 2024
Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.