Arizona keeps finding another gear after the first quarter, and that trend was on full display again Saturday night in Pullman.
The Wildcats were staring at a 14-0 deficit on the road against Washington State, a much steeper climb than last week’s 10-0 hole at home against Northern Illinois. But just like they did a week earlier, they settled in, stopped the bleeding and turned the game around. Arizona tied it midway through the second quarter, grabbed the lead in the third and finished with a 34-24 win over the Cougars.
It was the kind of road comeback that almost never happens for Arizona. The victory marked the first time in at least the last 40 years the Wildcats had won on the road after falling behind 14-0. The 2012 New Mexico Bowl comeback from 21-0 down came at a neutral site, not away from home.
“We go down 14-0 and nobody flinched,” UA coach Brent Brennan said afterward. “Everybody just went to work doing their job, playing Redline, and the results followed after that.
I’m excited about the resiliency of this team. We’re going to need it in the Big 12.”
That resilience has been a major shift from the way Arizona has typically handled big deficits. Since 2004, the Wildcats are 10-108 when trailing by two or more scores, though four of those wins have come with Noah Fifita at quarterback, including last season’s bowl-eligibility clincher against Kansas and the 2023 Alamo Bowl.
The closing stretch has been the difference in these last two games. Arizona has outscored its opponents 62-17 after the first quarter over that span, a sharp contrast to the BYU game, where the Wildcats led 17-14 at halftime but faded in the fourth quarter and lost by 11.
“That’s something that we’ve been talking about and been working on since BYU,” Brennan said. “Where we didn’t finish in the fourth quarter, but tonight we did.”
The opening quarter remains a concern. Leaving out the NAU game, Arizona has been outscored 31-24 in the first 15 minutes, a far cry from last season when the Wildcats were plus-24 in the opening quarter.
“Obviously we’ll work on that,” Brennan said. “We we want to start fast. Trust me.”
There’s one more wrinkle to Arizona’s upcoming test: Cincinnati has been dealing with its own early-game drama. The Bearcats are 4-0 and had to rally Saturday as well, falling behind 10-0 at home to Kansas State before coming back to win 31-26. A week earlier, they erased deficits of 14-0 and 28-7 against Miami (Ohio) on the way to a 35-31 victory.
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