Saturday, September 12, 2015

Arizona vs. Nevada final score: Wildcats run past Wolf Pack, win 44-20

That Nick Wilson guy can run the football

After a kind of shaky first half, the Arizona Wildcats settled in during the third quarter and ran away from the Nevada Wolf Pack on Saturday night, taking the game by a score of 44-20.

The star of the game was Nick Wilson, while guys like Jamar Allah and William Parks most definitely stepped it up on the defensive side of the ball.

Here are some takeaways from the big win, and the 2-0 start. It was such a big win that Rich Rodriguez put in Jerrard Randall and Jared Baker at the very beginning of the fourth quarter.

Running wild: After picking up 106 yards and two touchdowns on just eleven carries in the first half, Nick Wilson kept the train rolling in the second half. He would finish with 194 yards after getting 171 against Nevada last year. He averaged 9.2 yards per carry, and his 194 yards were exactly double of what he had against UTSA. Randall added his own flavor to it, picking up 60 yards, 57 of them on a long touchdown scramble. And then Orlando Bradford took his first career carry 33 yards and pulverized a Nevada defender in the process. Safe to say the running game is back on track.

As a team, the Wildcats finished with 301 yards on the ground. They only had more than 300 rushing yards in one game in 2014 (Pac-12 Championship Game - 301).

Offensive line imbalance: For some reason, and it's probably more on Zach Hemmila than Freddie Tagaloa, but the left side of the offensive line seemed to struggle throughout the game. Almost all of Wilson's big plays were to the right side behind Jacob Alsadek and Lene Maiava. Could be something to watch going forward.

10th-string linebackers: Rich Rodriguez even commented at halftime how the team was getting a little thin at linebacker with all these guys going down. Haden Gregory went down early in the game, and ended up with a brace on his right knee and didn't return. Then we got some Tre Tyler, who was hurt for a bit before returning in the second half. Derrick Turituri also got shaken up, but turned out alright as well. It's getting scary there. Good thing it's an FCS opponent in NAU next week before heading into the Pac-12 season.

Jamardre Cobb: The linebacker-turned fullback picked up his first career TD after an Anu Solomon keeper was ruled short of the goal line. So maybe he's better off at fullback than linebacker. After all, his buddy Marquis Ware still can't get on the field despite all these injuries.

Kicking woes: For the first time in his career, Casey Skowron missed an extra point in the third quarter. He followed that up with a missed 45-yard field goal attempt three minutes later. He did connect on a 46-yarder late in the game. This, like the offensive line, might be something to keep an eye on as we get closer to tougher opponents.

Steady Solomon: Got all the way down here, and realized I hadn't put in any passing numbers yet. Anu Solomon threw for two touchdowns, one to Johnny Jackson, and the other to Cobb. No interceptions, 24-33 overall, and 264 yards. He's just getting it done.

Arizona returns home next weekend to face the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. That game is scheduled to kick off at 8 PM local time on Pac-12 Networks. Both NAU and Arizona will enter that game with 2-0 records.



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