Wild About AZ Cats

With the game in hand, after the UA defense stopped what appeared to be an unstoppable Stanford offense, Arizona coach Mike Stoops took off his headset and jumped straight in the air with his fist raised.

The 43-38 survival of a victory Saturday night at Arizona Stadium over Stanford had a cleansing feel for Stoops. USC has its place atop the Pac-10 as long as Pete Carroll is coaching there. The competition for the second rung — meaning below the Trojans — is where Arizona should set its sights.

The win, especially when it appeared the UA was facing another demoralizing defeat, is important inasmuch as it means that Arizona can finally be a power player in the conference. Equally important is that it came at the hands of Jim Harbaugh, who is trying to coach Stanford past Stoops’ team and the other USC challengers.

Harbaugh, a thorn in Stoops’ side by winning the first two meetings between the two, said, “This is the toughest loss you could have been a part of.”

“I’d rather play bad and win than play well and lose,” Stoops said.

That is an apt way to describe Arizona’s performance the last two weeks. Arizona’s defense was porous enough to make the Cats lose to Stanford, allowing a season-high 584 yards. Last week, in a controversial loss at Washington, the Wildcats played well enough to win but crumbled in the last five minutes, aided by the phantom interception returned for a touchdown by the Huskies’ Mason Foster.

“It’s funny how things have a way of evening out,” Stoops added.

Stanford was driving to increase its nine-point lead at the turn of the fourth quarter when I said to my colleague Anthony Gimino, “Arizona was ahead by 12 points late in the fourth quarter at Washington last week and look what happened.” Gimino chuckled.

As fate would have it, Stanford’s drive stalled immediately afterward and its field goal kicker Nate Whitaker missed a 36-yard field goal. That was the momentum changer. That was the equal of Vuna Tuihalamaka committing an untimely personal foul last week against Washington that prolonged an eventual scoring drive.

A few players later, Greg Nwoko ran 43 yards untouched for a touchdown — two more yards than what the UA rushed for before that point. Stanford continued to unravel, having to punt for the first time in the game on its next possession. The Cardinal failed on two fourth-down conversions afterward, the last one ending their hopes of winning.

The improbable victory, after things looked so bleak, included Nic Grigsby’s 57-yard touchdown run on a 3-and-17 draw play that even offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes said was a bad offensive play call. He admitted the UA should have passed against the blitz instead of run the ball. Wasn’t it last week when Nick Foles should not have made that infamous pass to Delashaun Dean and the UA should have ran instead against Washington?

Like Stoop says, funny how things even out.

“They had an illegal procedure call on the previous play and they were dropping everybody,” Dykes said. “They changed it up after the penalty and they blitzed everybody, so really honestly, (the draw) was a bad call. It just worked for us. Nic did a good job and made a guy miss.”

Breaks like that happen for teams who aspire for bowl games that take place well after Christmas. I realize it’s not even Halloween yet but a Rose Bowl representative was in attendance, most likely with more of an eye on Stanford, which was 3-1 in the conference.

How many times has Arizona been able to say it has the big-play players on offense — including an effective offensive line –to make a bowl game in January possible?

The composure of Foles matched with the athletic ability of the array of receivers he throws to is something Arizona has never seen before. Foles completed 40 of 51 passes for 415 yards and three touchdowns. More impressive than that, facing an aggressive Stanford defense that blitzed at least 40 times, according to Dykes, Foles did not throw an interception and he was never sacked.

Foles looks like the second-coming of Tom Brady with his impeccable read decisions in Dykes’ offense that requires quick-count throws. For the season, he has completed 116 passes with only 49 incompletions, a 74 percent clip. His yardage total is already past 1,000 yards in only five games — 1,152. He has eight touchdown passes and two interceptions.

When Dykes went to a no-huddle offense just before the half, Foles was even more dangerous because Stanford did not know what Foles would do next. Again, another example of Arizona finally making the right moves in an effort to climb the pecking order of the Pac-10. A 92-yard drive required to win the game, culminating on Grigsby’s elusive run to the endzone, did not seem so out of the question with Foles at the controls.

“We went into this game confident despite what happened last week,” Foles said. “I think that says a lot about the character of this team. A lot of that had to do with how the coaches called the game and how they gave us the confidence we needed.

“The up-tempo approach we took, it opened up a lot of windows. It was all the preparation this week that was the difference in this game.”

With a win like this, you would think that Stoops finally gets his due. But the Wildcats are only halfway through the season with road games at Cal and USC still looming as well as a home encounter with Oregon. If Arizona goes 4-2 like it did in the first half of the season, the Wildcats would be an unceremonious 8-4 and 4-3 and again headed to a bowl of the caliber of the Las Vegas Bowl.

Big-time programs have much larger aspirations.

Before Grigsby made the game-winning touchdown run, some of the players practically gave him an ultimatum. The same type of ultimatum can be made for the Arizona program.

“A lot of guys on the sideline were like, ‘Hey Grigs, big-time players make big-time plays, and you are about to make it right now,’” Grigsby said. “Next thing you know, I went out there on the drive and the Lord was right there and he guided me into the endzone.”