Arizona defensive coordinator Mark Stoops walked into the postgame interview room. He probably didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to sit at the big table, just find a little corner of the room. Maybe no one would notice him.

“I’m not happy,” he started, surrounded by a semi-circle of seven or eight media members with cameras and reporters.

“Let me rephrase that,” he said. “I’m ecstatic we won. But I’m embarrassed.”

Coaching defensive football is his livelihood, so a 43-38 victory in which his unit gives up a staggering 584 yards and six passing plays of at least 30 yards is going to create all kinds of conflicting emotions … which eventually gave way to a smile.

“I hugged all the offensive coaches and kissed them all,” Stoops said.

“I said, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life to win a game like that.’ We’ve been part of a lot of good defensive efforts on the losing end. That doesn’t feel any better. That feels worse.

“Yeah, I kissed them all. All the offensive coaches and the players. I said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ And I mean it.

“I don’t want to make it a habit, and I’m not proud of the effort, but I’m proud of the stops at the end and I’m proud the offense put up a lot of points.”

Yeah, about those stops at the end. That was something. The defense made a couple of plays, and got a little bit of luck at the end.

Head coach Mike Stoops said it Monday. Things in life have a way of evening out.

Arizona should have won at Washington. It didn’t. Stanford should have won Saturday night at Arizona Stadium. It didn’t.

The lesson — if you can extrapolate one from two of the craziest games you have ever seen — is that if you’re a visiting team, you better put the home team away when you have a chance.

Stanford didn’t.

For as well as Stanford moved the ball and schemed to get receivers wide open — like by 15 yards or more — the Cardinal didn’t score on any of its last four possessions, propping the door open for Arizona’s comeback.

Arizona, down 38-29, held Stanford to a 36-yard field goal attempt early in the fourth quarter. Wide left. UA forced a punt on the Cardinal’s next possession (Stanford’s only punt of the game). Stanford, after recovering a fumble deep in Arizona’s territory and up only two points, went for it on fourth-and-2 from the UA 8 with less than six minutes left.

Running back Toby Gerhart limped off the field before the play. Game on the line? Stanford dropped a pass for a first down.

Then came the miracle. Third-and-17 … Nic Grigsby takes a handoff … does some shake and bake … does some more shake and bake …

“Just saw daylight,” Grigsby said. “That’s my specialty — daylight.”

Fifty-seven yards later, Arizona had the lead.

But Mark Stoops’ defense needed one more stop. The Cats didn’t get it on fourth-and-5 when Stanford redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Luck — I won’t be the first to say he’s going to play in the NFL, but let me get it on the record here anyway — scrambled for 5 yards. First down, by less than the length of the football.

Luck then hit a 36-yard pass to the UA 17, and Arizona fans’ hearts were dropping, hopes were drooping. The Cats eventually worked it to fourth-and-10. After blitzing on third down, Arizona sent only four to the quarterback.

“I knew they were coming at me. They were coming at me the whole game,” said sophomore cornerback Trevin Wade. “I just told myself and was praying, ‘I hope they come my way because I want to make a play for the team.’”

Wade was right. Luck lofted a ball toward Chris Owusu in the left corner of the end zone.

“He went outside, so I went outside … I saw his eyes light up, so I turned around quick and jumped,” Wade said.

Wade made the play. He knocked the ball down. Save for the final 23 seconds, game over.

Mike Stoops said after the game that the team didn’t have a productive week of practice. It wasn’t easy to get over the Washington loss. About 12 players were suffering from the flu, and several key guys barely practiced. Starting offensive lineman Mike Diaz didn’t play because of illness, and starting defensive end Brooks Reed (ankle) missed his third consecutive game.

Grigsby? He said his bruised shoulder is still “killing” him, maybe about 60 percent healthy. But, hey, some Wildcat needed to make a play, so …

“It was something that was supposed to be done and needed to be done,” he said of his game-winning run. “Coaches tell me to make the first guy miss, and I made him miss.”

In the end it was just another Arizona game with 1,137 yards of offense (cough, cough), just another game in which its starting quarterback, Nick Foles, goes 40 of 51 for 415 yards and three touchdowns. That’s the eighth-best yardage total in UA history. And still no foles4heisman.com?

Well, at least he got a hug from the defensive coordinator.

Hey, hugs all around. Arizona is 4-2 and has a schedule set up on a platter — UCLA and Washington State at home — to go to 6-2 overall and 4-1 in the Pac-10. Think about that for a minute. For all week, if you want.

Catch your breath, too. These Cats aren’t boring. Each Pac-10 game has been — and almost certainly will be a heart-stopping — affair. You’re going to win some. You’re going to lose them. Enter Mike Stoops, the philosopher.

“I’d rather play bad and win than play good and lose,” he said with a chuckle. “Believe me.”

The word of the day is “freak.”

As in Arizona coach Mike Stoops saying several times Monday, referring to that play in last Saturday’s painful loss at Washington, “it was just a freak thing” or some variation thereof.

But that wasn’t the only freaky thing going on.

On Friday morning, senior defensive tackle Earl Mitchell was standing in a hallway at McKale Center. Someone called his name. He glanced. He started to turn his head back around. A door opened from the baseball locker room.

Bam!

The edge of the door hit him above the eye.

“It was pretty much just a freak accident,” Mitchell said Monday.

Freakish enough that he needed a couple of stitches in his eyebrow, and coaches worried about a head injury, so Mitchell didn’t travel with the team to Seattle later that day. That put the Wildcats down two starting defensive linemen — Mitchell and end Brooks Reed, who missed his second consecutive game with an ankle injury.

“It’s crazy. Real unfortunate,” Mitchell said. “The thing is, it could have happened to anybody. To be honest, I’m glad it happened to me rather than somebody else walking down the hallway.”

Arizona started Lolomana Mikaele at defensive tackle, with D’Aundre Reed starting at end. Defensive coordinator Mark Stoops revealed Monday that Reed suffered a broken hand during the game, but was out there at the end of the game because the line was “bare bones.”

D’Aundre Reed’s availability for Saturday isn’t yet known.

Mitchell said he was confident about playing this week, but Mike Stoops called Mitchell and Reed “kind of day to day.”

“Getting those two guys healthy will be a big factor in this game,” Stoops said, referring to an expected physical battle against Stanford and bull-dozing running back Toby Gerhart.

On the other side of UA’s line, starting left guard Conan Amituanai suffered a knee injury against Washington. “Hopefully, it’s just an MCL sprain,” Stoops said. If it is, Amituanai figures to be out 2-3 weeks. He was scheduled for an MRI exam this afternoon.

“At least we have some depth,” Stoops said.

The starting line figures to look like this: LT Phillip Garcia, LG Mike Diaz (moving from left tackle), C Colin Baxter, RG Herman Hall, RT Adam Grant.

Right guard Vaughn Dotsy is back from a concussion, so he could go into the lineup, with Hall moving to the right side for more mix-and-match possibilities.

Stoops said running backs Nic Grigsby and Keola Antolin were still “banged up” for the Washington game, leaving the bulk of the work to Greg Nwoko. More will be known about the status of Grigsby and Antolin later in the week.

At receiver, Bug Wright, who has missed two full games because of a knee injury, “should be back, hopefully,” Stoops said. Wright was scheduled to participate in some of practice this afternoon.

“He looked pretty good running at the end of the week last week,” Stoops said.

It is customary for a college football head coach to talk up his weekly opponent. The gamesmanship is just part of the game.

Mike Stoops

But without a touch of insincerity, Arizona coach Mike Stoops raved and raved Monday about Washington junior Jake Locker, mentioning the quarterback in the same breath as Florida’s Tim Tebow (one of the greatest college quarterbacks ever) and John Elway (one of the greatest quarterbacks ever).

“I think people used to laugh at you when you compared him to Tebow a couple of years ago,” Stoops said at his weekly news conference.

“But watch him play. There is not a throw on the field he can’t make. Some of throws he made in the USC game to give them a chance to win were phenomenal. …

“One of his strongest attributes is his ability to scramble and keep plays alive and keep looking downfield to throw the ball. We’re talking that this kid might be the best quarterback in the country. He possesses arm strength and makes throws a lot of guys can’t make. He just flicks the ball and it just gets there very quickly.”

One of the reasons Stoops might be such a big fan is that Locker had — statistically — his career game against Arizona as a freshman in 2007 in Seattle. Locker passed for 336 yards and two touchdowns, and ran for 157 yards and two scores, but the Wildcats rallied to win 48-41 and probably saved Stoops’ job that day.

Locker was out with a thumb injury when Arizona routed Washington last season.

“I don’t want to get crazy, but the guy has got an Elway-type of release and arm strength that not many people have,” Stoops said. “His mobility … John was a lot like that when he was younger.”

Locker (6-3, 226) played in only four games last season because of the thumb injury, and he entered this season below 50 percent in career accuracy. Things are different this season under first-year head coach Steve Sarkisian, who tutored Heisman-winners Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC.

With improved mechanics and working in a pro-style offense, Locker has completed 57.7 percent of his throws through five games.

“I read somewhere we he lost 10 pounds or so. You can tell,” Stoops said.

“He’s not as bulky as he was, and he’s much more fluid in what he is doing when you watch him play. … Accuracy is somewhere where he struggled, but his accuracy is much different. He’s working with a guy who has worked with a number of top quarterbacks throughout his career.”

If you don’t believe Stoops’ flattery, how about the praise from USC’s Pete Carroll? He said this about Locker — before the Huskies upset the Trojans in Seattle last month.

“That’s the best quarterback we’ve played in nine years here,” Carroll said. “He’s the most extraordinary athlete at the position we’ve seen, and I saw that as a freshman.”

That “extraordinary athlete” thing includes Texas QB Vince Young.

And what are Stoops’ final words on Locker?

“Hopefully, he will leave after this year,” he said.

INJURY NOTES
Stoops said that all his injured players have a chance to be back this week, with the exception of tight end Rob Gronkowski and receiver Bug Wright.

Gronkowski is out for the season after back surgery; Stoops said it would be 2 to 3 months before he could resume physical activity. Wright, who had arthroscopic knee surgery, could be back for the Oct. 17 home game against Stanford (which, by the way, will start at 4:30 p.m. and be telecast on Versus, it was announced Monday).

Running back Nic Grigsby would not have contact today in practice as he tries to come back from a shoulder injury, Stoops said. Other players trying to make it back are defensive end Brooks Reed (ankle), offensive guard Vaughn Dotsy (concussion), offensive tackle Mike Diaz (concussion), running back Keola Antolin (ankle) and receiver Delashaun Dean (thigh).

Arizona has good depth at running back, but that doesn’t mean the Wildcats want to rely on that every game.

Grigsby

Starting running back Nic Grigsby, who carried only one time for 7 yards against Oregon State on Saturday before leaving with a shoulder injury, doesn’t figure to miss any more game time, coach Mike Stoops said Tuesday.

“It doesn’t look too severe,” Stoops said.

“Any time a running back hurts his shoulder a little bit, that’s a concern because, obviously, he gets hit or falls on it a great deal. I would think Nic would probably sit out most of this week and be back hopefully at full strength sometime next week. It’s sore, and it’s going to be sore. I don’t think it is going to limit him.”

Arizona is off this week after starting the season 3-1. The Wildcats will play at Washington on Oct. 10.

Despite the abbreviated appearance against Oregon State, Grigsby is still 19th nationally with 101.75 rushing yards per game. UA’s depth at running back, including Keola Antolin and Greg Nwoko, more than picked up the slack on Saturday.

Arizona has several other banged-up players — including OG Vaughn Dosty (concussion), OT Mike Diaz (concussion) and DE Brooks Reed (ankle) — which means the bye week comes at a good time. All these players should have a good chance of playing at Washington.

“This is a great time,” Stoops said of the bye week. “Coming out of camp, playing four straight games, with the heat that we have to deal with … it gets a little bit worrisome.”

Related on wildaboutazcats.com: Oregon State coach Mike Riley offers his evaluation of UA quarterback Nick Foles.

Arizona won a Pac-10 road game when it didn’t have tight end Rob Gronkowski, defensive end Brooks Reed, offensive tackle Mike Diaz, offensive guard Vaughn Dotsy and receiver Bug Wright, all out because of injury.

Arizona won a Pac-10 road game when it lost running back Nic Grigsby to a shoulder injury on the first series of the game.

Arizona won a Pac-10 road game when it lost backup running back Keola Antolin in the first half to a leg injury.

Arizona won a Pac-10 road game when it was using a first-time starting quarterback, had two critical replay reviews go in favor of the other team … and Arizona won when it absolutely had to have some Wildcat make a play on defense at the end of the game.

That Wildcat was cornerback Devin Ross, who came up with an interception with 1:33 left when Arizona was protecting a three-point lead.

The 37-32 win at Oregon State — when sophomore Nick Foles emerged as the quarterback of the future — was at once a huge sigh of relief and a positive sign for the rest of the season.

The Wildcats won because they have the kind of overall depth they didn’t come close to having when Mike Stoops took over for the 2004 season after Hurricane Mackovic ripped through the program.

“I think that’s the greatest compliment I can give our coaches and our players,” Stoops said in his postgame radio interview. “We develop players.”

There is lot left in the season, and most of the Pac-10 schedule will produce games just like this one — physical, dramatic, up for grabs. The Wildcats’ season could go any which way.

But if you’re looking for optimism, here are a few somethings to consider.

Since near the end of the 2007 season, Arizona:

• Has won 14 of 21 games.
• Is 9-5 in Pac-10 games.
• Has a 3-2 record against ranked teams.
• Defeated the No. 2 team in the country (Oregon, 2007).
• Won the 2008 Las Vegas Bowl, 31-21 over BYU.
• Has been competitive against everybody, not losing a game by more than 10 points.

The thing that has kept Stoops from more success in his five-plus seasons has been his record in close games. Before the Oregon State game, Stoops was 6-16 in games decided by eight points or less.

He’s now 7-16 in those situations.

“It was an unbelievable team win,” Stoops said.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but to have the kids compete for the full 60 minutes was very gratifying. We had guys step up … all over the place.”

None more so than Foles, who completed 25 of 34 passes for 254 yards, with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He also rushed for a touchdown. Most of all, he showed poise in the pocket, able to feel pressure, scramble for time … and still make the play.

“Arizona was about as efficient as I’ve ever seen them,” said Oregon State coach Mike Riley. “They were sharp.”

Foles made his first career start look as low-stress as a day at the beach.

“A pretty cool guy,” Stoops said. “He is not too up. He never got too down when he didn’t start. He’s a competitor. … We needed his composure tonight.”

Given the circumstances and adversity, it was one of the biggest wins of Stoops’ tenure. But we seem to be saying that a lot lately.

After last season’s win over Arizona State to get bowl eligible.

After the win over BYU.

And now the win at Oregon State to start Pac-10 play.

In all, Arizona has been a very good program for about two full seasons now.

Has Stoops gotten enough credit for that?