Arizona left Provo with a loss, but not with its season derailed.
The Wildcats had a real shot at a statement win against ranked BYU, and for much of the afternoon they played like a team ready to grab one. Arizona led for a half, then stayed within one possession and had the ball in Cougar territory midway through the fourth quarter. In the end, though, BYU finished the job and Arizona fell 28-17.
That result stung because the opportunity was there. Arizona was good enough to put itself in position to win, but not quite sharp enough to make the decisive plays when the game tightened.
Jay’Vion Cole had a chance to change things with an interception. Noah Fifita had Giovanni Richardson open down the sideline for what could have been a touchdown.
Shane King dropped a short pass that might have produced good yardage. Rodney Gallagher III came up just a foot short on the biggest play of the game.
One more tackle, one more stop, one more clean execution - any of those could have flipped the night.
That’s the part that hurt. And it’s why the reaction around the program has been emotional.
“So, we had to make a play at some point to win the game,” defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales said earlier this week. “They made the play that we didn’t, and I think our entire football team was that way because of the expectation.”
Gonzales also pointed out that the frustration from fans says plenty about where the program is headed. In his words, it “means they expected greatness to happen in that moment.”
That expectation is the new reality around Arizona. Last year, progress like this felt encouraging because the Wildcats were climbing out of a four-win season.
This fall feels different. The bar has moved.
Arizona came into the season with real goals: chase the Big 12 title, put Noah Fifita in the Heisman conversation, and help several players strengthen their NFL cases. A near-miss in Provo doesn’t erase those goals, but it does show the Wildcats are still missing something when the game is on the line.
Even so, this is not a season that should be judged by one loss in early September. There are still at least 10 games to play, and there’s time for Arizona to turn a painful defeat into a useful lesson.
That was the feeling inside the locker room, too. Offensive coordinator Seth Doege said Wednesday that the players didn’t come away from the BYU game looking broken or rattled.
“You know, I think after that game when you walk in the locker room, there’s two ways you could feel about a team,” Doege said Wednesday. “And when I walked in, I was like, ‘OK, are they gonna be down?
Are they gonna be shook? Are they gonna be pissed off?’
“They were pissed off. And that’s like you didn’t see when you see tears from Noah Fifita.
When you see tears from Chris Hunter, when you see tears from Rhino (Tapa’atoutai), when you see tears from [Kedrick Reescano], I didn’t see tears of I ‘I’m shook, like poor me, pity me, like we didn’t get it done. I feel bad for myself.‘
I saw tears of pissed off. We let one go.
And so they know they can be good.”
That kind of response matters. It suggests the Wildcats took the loss as a missed chance, not a verdict.
There’s still a path here that looks pretty good. Arizona should beat Northern Illinois.
It will be favored at Washington State and again at home against Cincinnati. Then comes West Virginia, and a reasonable projection has the Wildcats sitting at 5-1 before their bye week and a home game against Iowa State.
If Arizona handles those games, it would be 6-1 heading into a Halloween trip to Texas Tech. That road game would likely bring another familiar setup: a chance to prove it can finish when the moment gets tight.
For now, that’s the hope. And after what happened against BYU, it’s the right kind of hope - not blind optimism, just the belief that Arizona is close enough to make this loss matter for the right reasons later on.
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