Washington vs. Arizona: Notable stats from the 35-28 OT loss for the Wildcats

What numbers caught our eye on Saturday night?

The Arizona Wildcats took the Washington Huskies to overtime on Saturday night, but were unable to complete the upset bid as they failed to score in the extra period.

While the Huskies advance to 4-0 with the 35-28 win, there are plenty of numbers on the Arizona side that stand out from the game. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

167 and 160

passing yards by Arizona and Washington respectively. Yes, the Wildcats threw for more yards than the Huskies. Sure, that was obviously aided by the Brandon Dawkins to Shun Brown 54-yard prayer late in the game, but it’s still advantage Arizona in this statistical category when it’s all said and done. I don’t think a lot of people would have taken that bet coming into this game.

4

fourth down attempts and sacks by Arizona. Let’s start with the fourth down attempts. Never did I think I’d see the day where Rich Rodriguez had such gutsy playcalling when the offense is running without a lot of crucial starters. Did it come back to bite him? Perhaps. One of those fourth downs was on the UW two-yard line early in the game. Arizona went for the TD and the 14-0 lead at the time rather than kicking the field goal.

Now to the sacks. I don’t think the defensive line looked particularly great, as Washington just kind of ran the ball down Arizona’s throats throughout the night. But we do have to acknowledge the fact that the Wildcats picked up four sacks, including two by Jack Banda.

3.2

yards per carry by the two guys that will have to be Arizona’s running backs in the immediate future. Between Brandon Dawkins and J.J. Taylor, Arizona put up 273 rushing yards on 32 attempts, good for an average of 8.53 yards per rush. Zach Green and Tyrell Johnson averaged 3.2 per attempt on 11 total carries. This could be an issue moving forward as teams will now be able to focus all of their attention on Dawkins.

5:20

Arizona’s time of possession in the second and third quarters...combined. This is one of the reasons why it wasn’t so surprising that UW scored their touchdown in overtime quickly and easily. The offense’s struggles in the middle portion of the game really wore out the Cats’ defense.

51.3

average net on Josh Pollack punts. One of the question marks heading into the year was how Pollack would handle punting and place kicking duties. He’s certainly made that a non-issue to this point in the year.

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