LOS ANGELES — If you happened to miss Arizona's game against Washington last weekend, you could get all caught up by watching Saturday night's contest against USC at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Wildcats had many of the same miscues take place resulting in points off turnovers and a hole the team could never climb out of on United Airlines Field eventually falling to the Trojans 41-14.
The negative plays continued to pile up for the Wildcats throughout the night starting with a muffed punt by return man Stanley Berryhill III giving the Trojans a short field to work with after the UA defense came up with its second stop. That resulted in the first points of the night and it only became worse from there.
USC eventually ended up with 13 points off turnovers with its first 10 points of the game coming by way of UA mistakes. Those were just the start of the problems for the Wildcats.
Quarterback Khalil Tate, a Los Angeles-area native, was made uncomfortable all night long with the Trojans pressuring him throughout the game resulting in USC's season-high seven sacks, five of which came in the first half. Tate eventually finished with just 47 yards passing in the game and was removed in the third quarter in favor of freshman Grant Gunnell.
"Basically we needed a spark," UA head coach Kevin Sumlin said about the move to get Tate out of the game. "We got Grant in there and as the game got out of hand we just left him in there to get experience and move the football."
Sumlin said after the game that there is no quarterback controversy, however, despite Gunnell leading the only two scoring drives for UA in the game. He finished with 196 yards passing after going 16-26 in his time on the field. As of now Sumlin said Tate will be his quarterback next weekend against Stanford.
"It's not a quarterback controversy," he said. "That's just where we are right now. We wanted to get Grant in there, that was the plan from last week. I told you guys that he wasn't gonna redshirt, so that was obvious that he was gonna play some more the rest of the year. He got to play a lot tonight.
"... We're moving on from this and the depth chart is still the same."
As Tate struggled to get the offense moving during his time on the field, UA leaned heavily on redshirt junior running back JJ Taylor to generate positive plays for the group.
He carried the ball 12 times and gained 78 yards in the first half for the Wildcats and finished with 80 yards on 16 carries. Outside of Taylor, the 'Cats struggled to string together many positive offensive plays Saturday night until the end of the game.
"We just didn't connect as a unit," Taylor said. "We just gotta put everything together and we'll be successful."
USC had plenty of success when it blitzed Saturday night and UA's quarterbacks were under plenty of duress throughout the game. Taylor, who is a successful player in pass protection, said the team simply didn't have enough players to block USC's defenders allowing free rushers to apply pressure on Tate and Gunnell throughout the night.
UA's defense had its second consecutive poor outing, but it didn't start out that way. The Wildcats' self-created issues gave USC short fields to work with early in the game and UA's defense was up to the task of slowing the Trojans down. As the game went along, however, USC's offense found a rhythm creating problems for the Wildcats.
"On defense our job is to stop them from scoring, so no matter what yard line we get put on that's supposed to be our job and that's all we can worry about," junior linebacker Colin Schooler said.
Arizona now has to regroup to avoid a three-game slide as it heads on the road once again next weekend as it travels to Northern California to face Stanford. Despite losses in its last two games, Sumlin is working to keep his team thinking in a positive way heading into the final game of the month.
"Talked to the whole team after the game just about where we are and what the expectations are," Sumlin said. "That's not gonna change. Really right now we can't go backwards, and that was basically my message to the team. 'Hey, look, ... are you gonna let this define you or are we gonna keep pushing forward? That's the choice you have. That's the choice this whole team has.'
"Coaches we gotta lead, but our leaders gotta lead too during the week and we've gotta keep moving on because we still got a lot of things out there in front of us. A lot of good stuff out there in front of us if we approach this thing the right way."
