It's easy to overlook a consequential result when so many exciting games happened in D1A over the weekend, but it's important not to miss that Arizona beat BYU 32-22.
Arizona has been taking steps to show their improvement, but those steps were somewhat obscured by the fact they lost those games.
"We lost to Saint Mary's by two and UCLA by three," said Arizona DOR Sean Duffy. "These were games where we felt we had a chance to win. We made some mistakes in those games and so what we needed to do was clean up those mistakes. That's what we did this past weekend. it’s a credit to the boys for continuing to work and work and work; we're making progress."
The Cougars took a 15-5 lead at halftime so Arizona had work to do. It probably should have been more. Twice BYU got over through their forwards right under the posts only to miss the conversions. Yes it was windy but most kickers would expect to make those. Up 10-0 BYU were not in control. Up 14-0 they might have had a bit more of an emotional edge.
Certainly also Arizona was not mistake-free early. An interception in their 22 helped lead to the first BYU try. A prime scoring chance was lost due to lack of support in the ruck.
"One of the goals for us was getting our penalty count down," said Duffy. "There are aggressive penalties and then there are penalties that are not—we’re trying to eliminate those penalties that are controllable."
BYU made their mistakes also. An interception that would have been an easy try was called back for a needless late hit. Finally for the Wildcats, hooker Cameron Blair popped off the back of a maul to score and make it 10-5. BYU did respond. Arizona did well to keep the forwards out, but the Cougars went wide and that made it 15-5.
