At the beginning of the season, No. 17 Arizona wasn’t looked at as one of the top teams in the Big 12 and many Wildcats fans wanted head coach Brent Brennan fired after going 4-8 in his first season leading the program.
Brennan wasn’t fired and was able to make changes to the coaching staff with key additions of Seth Doege as the offensive coordinator and promoting Danny Gonzales to the head defensive role.
Arizona had coaching changes and added 61 new faces to the roster to try to fix the issues of the 2024 season. Brennan’s moves worked as the Wildcats (9-3) racked up nine wins and ripped off five straight wins to close out the regular season.
On Sunday, the College Football Playoff bracket was announced along with the bowl matchups, which have Arizona playing in the Holiday Bowl in
San Diego and going up against SMU (8-4) with the game taking place on Jan. 2, with a kick-off time set for 6 p.m. (MST) on FOX.
This marks the third time in program history that Arizona will be playing in the Holiday Bowl and the first time since the 2009 season. The Wildcats are 1-1 in the previous games after facing Nebraska in both matchups.
During the 1998 Holiday Bowl, Arizona beat Nebraska 23-20 and finished 12-1 and No. 4 in the country, which is the best record and finish in program history.
With the bowl game appearance, Arizona now has made a bowl game 23 times with the last appearance coming in the 2023 season, when the Wildcats won 38-24 over Oklahoma and finished 10-3 on the year.
Leading that 2023 season and the win over the Sooners was quarterback Noah Fifita, who replaced Jayden de Laura and went 9-2 as the starter.
If Arizona is able to win its bowl game over SMU, it would mark the fifth 10-plus win season in program history. It would be the first time that the Wildcats have achieved that mark in a three-year span throughout their history.
Arizona had an amazing turnaround from a season ago and went from 4-3 to ripping off five straight wins with key victories over then-No. 25 Cincinnati and then-No. 20 ASU.
Although Fifita didn’t win Offensive Player of the Year for the Big 12, he was named the first-team all-conference quarterback. Two other Wildcats made the first-team in defensive backs Dalton Johnson and Treydan Stukes.
Throughout both teams’ history, Arizona and SMU are tied 1-1 in head-to-head games with the last game coming during the 1985 season when the Wildcats won 28-6 over the Mustangs.
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