The coaching change-up did not seem to make a difference for Arizona as it continued what is now a four-game lose streak after Saturday’s game against Oregon State. The Wildcats (4-5, 2-4 Pac-12) took a brutal beating from the Beavers in their homecoming game falling to OSU, 56-38, marking the fourth consecutive game UA has surrendered as least 40 points.
Within the last four games Arizona has given up 189 points.
Saturday's game was Arizona’s first since head coach Kevin Sumlin fired defensive coordinator Marcel Yates and linebackers coach John Rushing after the 31-41 loss against Stanford last week.
For the game against the Beavers (4-4, 3-2), Chuck Cecil filled in as the interim defensive coordinator while Hank Hobson took over for Rushing as linebackers coach.
When a head coach makes changes to his staff this late in the season the expectation is it will be for the benefit of the team. Sumlin said as much during his weekly press conference Monday when discussing why he decided to move on from Yates and Rushing.
Instead, Arizona turned in one of its worst performances of the season on defense giving up 572 yards.
“Communication was obviously an issue in the secondary when you got guys that wide open,” Sumlin said. OSU receiver Isaiah Hodgins caught seven passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns.
Despite new coaching, defensive tackle Finton Connolly said Arizona's mindset and preparation did not change from last week to this week.
“We’re just not getting there to the ball and you know we’re not sacking the quarterback, so I put a lot on us. I guess the biggest thing right now is the D-line we need to get to the ball, and we need to sack that quarterback. We didn’t have as many sacks as we’d like to, so we are hurting ourselves,” Connolly said.
It was a game of catch up right from the start for Arizona as OSU scored first in Saturday’s game.
Hodgins scored a 21-yard touchdown early in the first quarter. In what would foreshadow the rest of the game, the Wildcats trailed the Beavers by one point at the end of the quarter as kicker Lucas Havrisik connected on two field goals to account for Arizona’s only points in the opening 15 minutes.
It was not until the second quarter when Arizona scored its first touchdown of the game when freshman Grant Gunnell looked to running back Gary Brightwell for a 38-yard touchdown bringing the score to 14-12. The Wildcats missed an opportunity to tie the game failing to complete the two-point conversion.
At the end of the half Arizona fell behind even more when OSU scored four touchdowns in the second quarter alone.
Arizona had a lot of catching up to do in the second half after allowing OSU a 23-point lead early in the third. Despite touchdowns from Brightwell, wide receiver Cedric Peterson and running back J.J. Taylor in the second half that kept the game interesting, the Wildcats were unable to take the lead by the end of game.
“Your mindset it to never give up," Taylor said. "I don’t care what the score is. If we’re up by 50, down by 50 or it’s a tie game it doesn’t matter. You gotta play, you gotta have love for the game and give it all you got.”
Peterson accounted for one of the team's two receiving touchdowns in the game and finished with two catches for 39 yards.
“We always have a chance, we never want to doubt ourselves at any point," he said. "We’ve got plenty of weapons all across the board on offense and in just that one moment it can flip, and we just couldn’t get that click in right away. We made a few big plays we had to but at the end of the day we still needed a little bit more.”
In order to avoid pointing fingers in the locker room Sumlin said he has a conversation with his team on sticking together to avoid blaming the losses on any specific group or players.
“When things go well it’s easy for everybody so when things happen the way they’ve happened the last few weeks it’s important to stick together and be a team. When you win a bunch of games you don’t need to listen to the outside noise and when you do like we are now what’s important is what’s said in this building and what’s been said in that locker room and as I said you got really one choice and that’s to keep fighting and the way to keep fighting is to stay together,” Sumlin said.
Arizona will be off next week as it uses its third bye of the season to prepare for a road trp to face Oregon which currently sits at the top of the Pac-12.
