Arizona got the result it wanted in its opener, and the Wildcats did it with enough ease to spend most of the night controlling the tempo rather than chasing it.
The 35-7 win over NAU on Saturday night at Casino Del Sol Stadium gave Arizona its fourth straight season-opening victory, the program’s longest such run since an eight-game streak from 2008-15. An announced crowd of 40,129 watched the Wildcats clear the first of their 12 guaranteed tests, though the next one figures to be a different level of problem.
Noah Fifita kept stacking numbers onto his place in the Arizona record book. He threw two touchdown passes, went 22 of 29 for 262 yards and moved past Willie Tuitama for second on the school’s career passing yardage list. Fifita now has 9,445 career yards and needs 567 more to break Nick Foles’ UA record.
The Wildcats also leaned on a run game that kept producing answers. Kedrick Reescano finished off a pair of short scoring drives, and Arizona’s balanced rushing attack piled up 206 yards. Reescano’s second touchdown came after safety Quinn Olson’s interception late in the third quarter, a turnover that helped set up another short field for the offense.
Arizona’s defense made life miserable for NAU on the ground. The Lumberjacks finished with minus-7 rushing yards, the first time the Wildcats had held an opponent to negative yards rushing since 2006 against Stanford. Arizona added five sacks, including 2.5 from Chase Kennedy, who had four all of last season.
The night could have been even cleaner. Arizona was on track for its first shutout since a 35-0 win over NAU in 2013 before backup quarterback Sawyer Anderson threw a pick-six on his first collegiate pass.
Even with that blemish, the Wildcats had already put the game in hand. Arizona held NAU to 125 yards in the first half while building a 21-0 lead and topping 300 yards before the break. The offense went three-and-out on its first two possessions after halftime, but the defense answered by forcing three straight three-and-outs, keeping the field tilted in Arizona’s favor.
That stretch helped set up a 14-yard touchdown run by Marshall transfer Antwan Roberts Jr. with 5:01 left in the third quarter. Olson’s interception later in the period led to Reescano’s 1-yard score with 13:52 remaining.
Arizona struck first with a drive that featured plenty of Tre Spivey and Reescano. Spivey finished it off with a 20-yard touchdown catch, and that play pushed Fifita past Tuitama on the UA career passing list.
NAU had a couple of early chances to make things interesting. Chase Kennedy stopped one possession in Wildcat territory with a sack, and the Lumberjacks later moved across midfield before Giovanni Richardson lost the ball at the end of a long catch in the red zone.
Ty Pennington opened by completing his first eight passes, including a 24-yard throw to Myseth Currie on third-and-long. But on fourth down in Arizona territory early in the second quarter, he overthrew his target, and the Wildcats immediately made it pay. Arizona went 57 yards in six plays, with Fifita firing a strike on the move to Brandon Phelps for a 21-yard touchdown and a 14-0 lead with 10:41 left in the first half.
Reescano added a 1-yard run to make it 21-0 with 3:20 left before halftime.
NAU’s best chance to get on the board before the break came on a hook-and-lateral on third down that pushed the Jacks into field-goal range. The 35-yard attempt went wide right.
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Noah Fifita steadied the passing game and Kedrick Reescano provided the finishing touch on the ground, while the defense kept NAU from ever finding much rhythm. Arizona now turns to BYU, and the challenge there will be far different, which is why the opener mattered so much as a snapshot of what this group can do when it is clicking on all three sides. [Read more 🡒]
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What mattered most for Arizona was less the final margin than the way it managed the details around it. The Wildcats answered mistakes, kept moving the ball in chunks and never let the game turn into a stress test, even as NAU found a brief jolt later on. For a program trying to build habits as much as wins, the bigger takeaway was how much the roster still had to offer when the injury list was already making its presence felt. [Read more 🡒]