On a night where fans expected a lot of points and not a lot of defense, we saw the opposite in the first half with Arizona’s defense playing some of the best defense it has all year, en route to a 13-7 lead going into halftime against visiting Texas Tech.

On the second drive of the game, defensive back Lorenzo Burns made an amazing grab in the right corner of the end zone for an interception and capitalized on a miscommunication between Texas Tech quarterback Alan Bowman and his receiver. On the next Texas Tech drive, linebacker Anthony Pandy intercepted Bowman for a second time.

Arizona’s offense struggled in the first quarter. Through the first 14 minutes of the game, the offense had 44 yards of offense and also turned the ball over as well. With 30 seconds left in the first quarter, quarterback Khalil Tate found Darrius Smith for a 46-yard pass. This ended up leading to a Wildcat touchdown as Tate found Stanley Berryhill III over the middle with 13:37 in the second quarter.

In the second quarter, Tate found a hole and took the ball to the house for an 84-yard touchdown run, breaking his previous record of 82 yards during his game against Washington State in 2017.

With 5:52 left in the second quarter, Texas Tech attempted a fake field goal, but defensive end Jalen Harris didn’t fall for it and slammed kicker Mark Richardson to the turf to turn it over. 

The Wildcats weren’t able to capitalize though, as kicker Lucas Havrisik missed a 51-yard field goal with 3:03 left in the half.

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