RECAP: No. 20 Arizona gets thumped 31-7 on the road against No. 14 KSU

Friday night, No. 20 Arizona opened up its game against No. 14 Kansas State with a 14-play, 73-yard drive that ate up 7:28 resulting in a touchdown. UA was balanced with seven passes and seven rushing plays and looked to be clicking on all cylinders.

However, from that point on, it was all downhill as KSU thumped Arizona the rest of the way running away with the 31-7 win. This game can only be described as a complete domination by Kansas State and a lackluster effort by UA.

In the first game of the season, Arizona's defense struggled to keep New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier rush for 130 yards and two touchdowns. When facing Kansas State, those issues needed to be cleaned up with Avery Johnson behind center.

Defensive coordinator Duane Akina's defense couldn't solve the dual-threat quarterback issues as Johnson did whatever he wanted to do with his legs and totaled 110 yards on 17 rushes.

That's to go along with two touchdown passes by Johnson, who kept the Arizona defense on its toes from start-to-finish. In all, he finished with 266 yards of total offense and leaving UA still wondering if its defensive issues can be fixed moving forward.

On the offensive side of the ball, Arizona wasn't much better as the team struggled to move the football after the opening drive. One of the main reasons behind the Wildcats' struggles was due to lack of discipline by collecting nine penalties for 74 yards.

Plain and simple, the offense couldn't get going with home many times a holding call caused a big play to be erased. There were at least four times Arizona found itself in a 1st-and-20 situation due to penalties.

In comparison, Kansas State played a clean game getting penalized just three times for 20 yards.

When you have penalties like that, you can't afford to make mistakes and unfortunately for Arizona, Noah Fifita was far from perfect with his 26 of 42 passing with 268 yards and an interception.

The interception came at the worst time with Arizona trailing 14-7 in the second quarter. UA was in K-State territory when Fifita fired a long bomb to Malachi Riley that led to the pick. He was a few second late on his decision, which led to KSU defender Keenan Garber collecting his third career pick.

Outside of Tetairoa McMillan, who had 11 catches for 138 yards, the rest of the Arizona offensive looked lost and sluggish after the team's opening drive.

The rushing game was nearly non-existent with the team trailing for most of the second quarter on. running back Quali Conley carried the ball 14 times for 48 yards and scored the lone touchdown in the game for Arizona.

As if the lackluster performance on defense wasn't bad enough, Arizona gave up a 71-yard punt return touchdown to former Colorado transfer Dylan Edwards that seemed to complete change to momentum of the game.

Offense, defense and special teams had no answer for Kansas State leading to complete domination in Friday night's Top 20 showdown in Kansas.

Arizona will have a bye-week to fix what it can from this game, then the team stays on the road and heads to No. 12 Utah to open up conference play.