Arizona football: Tracing the roots of the Wildcats’ rise, from the 2020 gutter to the 2023 title chase

Only four schools are currently represented in both the College Football Playoff rankings and the Associated Press men’s basketball top 25. Three of them have massive stadiums and enormous budgets. The other is Arizona.

These are exhilarating times for the Wildcats, who not long ago were immersed in a basketball recruiting scandal and relegated to the Pac-12 football gutter.

Now, they’re in rarified air with only Alabama, Tennessee and Texas.

The on-court success is slightly unexpected — we did not foresee the victory at Duke — but lands well within a reasonable range given the program’s regular-season proficiency under third-year coach Tommy Lloyd.

But the on-field performance qualifies as an indisputable surprise, and it comes just three years after a 70-7 loss to Arizona State that ended Kevin Sumlin’s tenure and constituted perhaps the lowest point in program history.

Weeks later, Jedd Fisch was hired to execute a salvage operation in college football’s equivalent of the Mariana Trench. His reclamation project is running far ahead of schedule, even with the transfer portal expediting rebuilding jobs across the sport.

Picked to finish eighth in the Pac-12 preseason media poll, the Wildcats (8-3) are alone in third place, winners of five consecutive games and challengers for the conference title. The combination of an Arizona win (at Arizona State) and an Oregon loss (to Oregon State) will propel the Wildcats into the Pac-12 championship game.

If Fisch doesn’t win Pac-12 Coach of the Year, it’s only because Washington’s Kalen DeBoer will have produced the first undefeated regular season of the conference’s expansion era.

Arizona’s ascent has several pillars:

— Defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen’s work has been first-rate.

Last year, the Wildcats allowed 6.6 yards per play, which ranked 126th nationally out of 131 teams; this season, opponents are gaining just 5.3 yards per play, good for 48th nationally.

Yet inexplicably, Nansen was not among the 15 semifinalists for the Broyles Award, given to the nation’s top assistant coach or coordinator.

— The Wildcats are exponentially better along the lines of scrimmage.

What once looked like a glorified high school program in the trenches now features bigger bodies playing at an all-conference level.

How much bigger? The eight players expected to start Saturday at ASU across the offensive and defensive lines weigh 13 pounds more, on average than the eight who started against the Sun Devils at the end of the 2020 season.

— The schedule has proven fortuitous.

Most of the Wildcats’ most demanding conference games have been in the friendly confines of Arizona Stadium (Washington, UCLA, Oregon State and Utah).

The road lineup includes USC and the four teams at the bottom of the conference standings: ASU, Colorado, Stanford, and Washington State, which have a combined record of 7-26 in league play.

The Wildcats are 3-0 so far, with Tempe looming.

— The Sons of Servite.

This aspect of Fisch’s rebuild, while well-known to Arizona fans, has been overlooked across the conference. Quarterback Noah Fifita, receiver Tetairoa McMillan, and linebacker Jacob Manu were teammates and classmates at Servite High School in Anaheim and signed with the Wildcats in the winter of 2021-22.

All three have been essential to the turnaround.

Fifita took over for injured starter Jayden de Laura and owns a 5-2 record; McMillian has nine touchdowns and averages 14 yards per catch; Manu leads the conference with 99 tackles. (A fourth Servite player, tight end Keyan Burnett, has three catches this season.)

In fact, the Servite products arguably have made a greater impact on Arizona than any high school classmates have on any team in recent conference history.

What’s the competition?

Two decades ago, USC benefitted from the arrival of the so-called ‘Poly Four’ — four teammates from famed Long Beach Poly: offensive tackle Winston Justice, tailback Herschel Dennis, defensive tackle Manuel Wright and safety Darnell Bing.

And in 2016 the ‘Hallandale Trio,’ from Hallandale High School in Florida, helped fuel Utah’s ascent in the Pac-12 South: tailback Zack Moss, quarterback Tyler Huntley and receiver Demari Simpkins.

But USC and Utah were on solid footing when those collections of high school teammates arrived. Arizona was stuck in the muck when the Servite products set foot on campus.

Without Fifita’s poise, McMillan’s play-making and Manu’s production, the Wildcats would not have a shot at the conference championship.

They would not be comfortably in the playoff rankings.

They would not stand as the No. 1 upside surprise in the conference this season.

Combine Nansen’s defense with stout lines of scrimmage, a favorable schedule, Fisch’s deft management, and the Sons of Servite, and Arizona finally has a football team worthy of standing with its basketball program in the rarefied air of national rankings.

From 70-7 to Oregon’s heels, the rise has been swift, stunning, and riveting.

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