Arizona’s four-game win streak was snapped by the hands of the Washington Huskies and quarterback Jacob Eason Saturday night by a final score of 51-27.
The first quarter was dominated by defense from both teams. At the end of the first quarter, the only scoring came from two Washington field goals. Outside of a 50-yard field goal from Lucas Havrisik, the first part of the second quarter didn’t have too much going on in the way of offense either. The last five minutes of the half saw the teams combine for 21 points and Arizona was leading at halftime despite nothing going the ‘Cats’ way.
“You can’t play a team of that caliber and turn the ball over, have a punt blocked and still be leading at half. It was a miracle … We couldn’t respond in the second half,” said Head Coach Kevin Sumlin.
The second half was completely different than the first. Washington came out and scored a touchdown five minutes in and never looked back. The Huskies went on to outscore the Wildcats 38-10 in the second half alone. After the game, Scottie Young Jr. talked about what made the difference in the game.
“Execution. Just finishing the game like I said a couple of weeks ago. They were just more disciplined. They were able to finish the game,” said Young.
For the last couple of weeks, Arizona’s offense has really struggled to score points outside of the Colorado game last week. Against Texas Tech and UCLA, Arizona only scored a combined 48 points. Meanwhile, they gave up 51 points tonight against Washington. Arizona quarterback Khalil Tate looked frustrated all night and just couldn’t get comfortable in the pocket.
“We didn’t play hard enough in the second half, and that’s when a great program like Washington can take over,” said Tate.
Looking forward, Arizona now has two road games. The first is this coming weekend in Los Angeles, Calif. against the USC Trojans and then after that, they travel up to Palo Alto, Calif. to face Stanford.
“I think it’s fairly easy. This team has been through adversity before so we know how to bounce back … I think we’ll be a lot better next week,” Tate said.
Arizona takes on USC this Saturday, October 19 at 6:30 p.m. MST in Los Angeles.
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