Arizona head coach Brent Brennan discussed Noah Fifita‘s career-game, the weather delay, both sides of the ball and things the team needs to clean up after a 48-3 win over Weber State on Saturday at Arizona Stadium.
Fifita threw a career-best five touchdown passes, putting himself in fourth place on Arizona’s all-time passing touchdowns list. Brennan praised the way he ran the offense in the first half and opening drive of the third quarter before backup quarterback Braedyn Locke replaced him, and acknowledged his improvement from last week’s 40-6 season-opener victory against Hawaii, in which completed 13 of 23 passes for 161 yards and a touchdown, and added a rushing touchdown.
“I don’t think Noah necessarily looks at it like he’s trying to make up for it, but he wants to play better,” Brennan said. “He just has such a high standard for himself, and we all have such a high standard for him, and so I thought it was great the way we executed in the first half on offense.”
Brennan was pleased with how Arizona executed in the red zone and the offense’s improvement in execution on third downs from game one to game two. The Wildcats were 5-10 on third down conversions, whereas it converted just three of 11 third downs last week against Hawaii.
“I thought we were better in the red zone tonight than we were a week ago. I think we were better on third down as well,” he said. “So that stuff was all really exciting to me, because those were, those were areas of emphasis for us.”
While Brennan praised the explosiveness of the offense, particularly the passing game which gained 406 yards between 12 receivers, he was disappointed that the running game wasn’t as explosive as he thought it was against Hawaii in the season opener in which Arizona had 183 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
“As we look at as a staff, I think we’re going to be disappointed that we didn’t run the ball better tonight, to be honest with you, I think we can be much better in that,regard, but, it was fun to see us be that explosive offensively,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things that we talked about with Coach Doege (offensive coordinator Seth Doege) and the addition of the receivers that we brought in. It was exciting to see those explosive plays and I thought Noah (Noah Fifita) had great command of the offense the entire game. So that was really good to see him just operating and executing at such a high level.”
Arizona’s defense recorded two sacks and forced two turnovers, and the defense has yet to yield a touchdown after two games. Brennan praised the stat line, acknowledged the defense’s disappointment in not maintaining a shutout but pointed to the opportunities the big lead gave to reserve players on defense and offense.
“There’s always talk of that, especially when you go that deep into a game and you have a chance to get it done,” he said. “So I think that there definitely was some disappointment that way. I think part of that also is that we gave some other guys a chance to play, and so we didn’t have quite the same group out there. But that’s okay. That’s okay. I think those guys were more happy to see some of those guys play, some of those freshmen get out there and run around and make some tackles and block some guys and run the football. But that part was was more exciting.”
The game started about two hours late because of lightning in the area. Brennan complimented the fans who stuck around, particularly the Zona Zoo student section.
“I thought it was a really fun night. I was really, really appreciative of how our fans hung in there after the weather delay and the Zona Zoo,” he said. “When we came out of the locker room after whatever it was, a couple hours of delay and just seeing the Zona zoo packed like that. So I thought that was outstanding.”
Despite the success Arizona had in all phases on Saturday, Brennan was critical of the 10 penalties Arizona racked up for 80 yards.
“Big picture wise, obviously we have some work to do in the accountability space, because we were heavily penalized tonight, and it was just too many, just too many.”
FOLLOW @KEVINMURFEE ON TWITTER! ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com writer Kevin Murphy was born and raised in Tucson, and has followed Arizona Wildcats athletics since childhood. Murphy is a journalist product manager with the Green Valley News the Sahuarita Sun. He has a bachelor’s degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU.
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