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Moving on: Arizona returns to practice, awaits bowl announcement

Matt Scott

Matt Scott threw three interceptions and lost a fumble against Arizona State. Photo by Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

The Arizona Wildcats, a week after the loss to Arizona State, returned to the practice field Friday, at least a little more able to look at the big picture.

“We’ve had a lot of great moments in the past; we’ve had a lot of good wins. We just have to move on to the next game,” senior quarterback Matt Scott told reporters after practice.

“We’ve had a lot of good wins with this team. It’s going to a great honor to play one last game with these guys.”

Regarding that one more game, the day and destination of the bowl game is still to be determined.

Not much has changed since last weekend. Still assuming the Sun Bowl will take name-brand USC, Arizona will land somewhere in this trio of bowls — the MAACO Las Vegas (Dec. 22), the Kraft Fight Hunger in San Francisco (Dec. 29) and the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque (Dec. 15).

Washington and Arizona State are the other schools up for those bowl games. As of Friday, Huskies coach Steve Sarkisian told KJR radio in Seattle that “everything I’m hearing” is that Washington will go to Las Vegas. But this has been a fluid situation all week.

Arizona, at 7-5 overall and 4-5 in the Pac-12, would have fallen no further than the Las Vegas bowl had it defeated ASU. Instead, the Sun Devils roared back from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit and won 41-34.

As for that big picture, Scott said he hears positive feedback from his fellow student around campus.

“A lot of guys are happy,” Scott said.

“Obviously I didn’t have a nice game, but people have come up to me and said we had a good season. Even though we lost, we had a great run. We had a great season compared to what people expected. No one expected us to win seven games, but we did it.”

Arizona is likely to know its bowl destination Sunday night after the BCS bowls make their selections.

Scott and running back Ka’Deem Carey admitted that the regular-season-ending loss to Arizona State lingered past coach Rich Rodriguez’s usual 24-hour rule to dwell on the previous game.

“It was more than 24 hours this time,” Carey said. “We kind of soaked it in and just used that as motivation and we’ll come out fierce after that loss.”

Thanks to Steve Rivera of FoxSportsArizona.com for providing quotes from practice.

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