If the Arizona Wildcats are to engineer the quick turnaround everyone within the program is seeking, it will require sacrifice and unselfishness up and down the roster.
For role models, UA coach Rich Rodriguez can point to two departing seniors.
Samajie Grant and Nate Phillips exemplified those traits during Friday’s season-ending Territorial Cup and throughout the 2016 season.
Grant, a 180-pound slot receiver, shifted from receiver to tailback with a little over a month left in his college career. Why? His team needed him.
In his final college game, Grant rushed a career-best 176 yards and three touchdowns in Arizona’s 56-35 victory over Arizona State. Grant displayed speed and toughness and played with little if any regard for his personal well-being.
“I kept telling myself, I can’t go out and play tonight and think about getting hurt,” Grant said late Friday night. “I just thought that I could contribute to the team, and that’s what I did. I didn’t think once about getting hit, twisting my ankles or my legs. I just wanted to play.”
At one point, Grant strained a hamstring. He spent some time pedaling an exercise bike, hobbled back onto the field and kept on running. Arizona’s final two touchdowns came courtesy of Grant runs: a 2-yarder that was all second effort and a 63-yard sprint into Territorial Cup lore.
“Samajie was phenomenal,” Rodriguez said. “Just a few weeks at running back. Particularly on some of the outside zones where he stuck his foot in the ground and got north.”
The true testament to Grant’s dedication was that he kept working to improve. Grant could have tried to rely on his natural ability after making the switch from receiver to tailback. Instead, he kept plugging away. Rodriguez’s compliment about Grant’s form came six days after he bounced too many runs to the outside in a 31-yard performance against Oregon State.
When Grant, fellow tailback Zach Green and quarterback Brandon Dawkins broke into the secondary against ASU, they benefited from their teammates’ selflessness.
Phillips was part of a receiving corps that had only two receptions — both by Phillips. Dawkins attempted only eight passes. The Wildcats rushed the ball 46 times (excluding two game-ending kneel-downs). It was a game that would require the receivers to do more blocking than catching.
It wasn’t what they were expecting. Phillips and his fellow wideouts figured Arizona’s chunk plays would come against ASU’s pass defense, which was ranked last in the nation.
“As a receiver group, we were thinking they were going to come more through the air,” Phillips said. “I had the one touchdown, but I probably ran 300 yards chasing them up and down the field.”
He didn’t seem unhappy about it.
Phillips sat alongside his buddy Grant during the postgame news conference, joking about the former receiver no longer texting him after moving to the running-back room. The receivers’ numbers didn’t matter. What did were Arizona’s school-record 511 rushing yards and its first victory since mid-September.
“We blocked pretty well up front of course,” Rodriguez said. “But I thought our perimeter blocking was really good. Our wide receivers were a really unselfish group. To only throw it as few times as we did and run for 500, those guys have to be unselfish, and they were.”
Aside from the fact that the Wildcats won, Friday wasn’t that different from previous games. Arizona had more rushing yards than passing yards for the eighth time in 10 contests.
Phillips was the UA’s leading receiver with 33 catches — a paltry total in the Rodriguez era. Phillips scored only two touchdowns. Neither he nor any of the receivers ever complained about not getting the ball enough.
Rodriguez alluded to some of those positive examples during a team meeting Thursday night.
“There wasn’t a single guy in our program, and especially those seniors, that ever pointed a finger or ever got down or ever doubted their role in the program or anything like that,” Rodriguez said.
He’ll be seeking more of the same in 2017.
‘They deserve
to be happy’
Arizona said goodbye to 23 seniors who endured a difficult season.
The Wildcats faced adversity from early August, when senior center Zach Hemmila passed away, to late November, when they were on the back end of an eight-game losing streak that ended Friday.
Rodriguez applauded the senior class for “hanging in there.”
“It was just one night, but they deserve to be happy tonight,” Rodriguez said late Friday. “I’m proud of them.”
Extra points
- Rodriguez and the coaching staff will spend most of the next two weeks on the road recruiting. A recruiting “dead period” begins Dec. 12 and lasts through Jan. 11. The returning players will begin offseason conditioning Monday.
- Phillips ended his UA career with at least one catch in 45 consecutive games.
- Rodriguez on Dawkins accidentally running into Miss Arizona at the end of a run in the first half: “He was kind, I think. Didn’t he help her up? At least I hope he did. You’ve got to be a gentleman at all times, even if you’re in a gladiator outfit.”
- Arizona scored touchdowns on all five trips to the red zone against ASU. The Wildcats had scored TDs only 51.4 percent of the time inside the red zone entering Friday.
- Arizona forced two turnovers in a game for the first time since its last victory, on Sept. 17 against Hawaii. The Wildcats are 25-4 under Rodriguez when forcing multiple turnovers.
- ASU’s 98 plays were the most an opponent has run against Arizona this season. Sixty of the plays were pass attempts. The Sun Devils possessed the ball for 35 minutes, 56 seconds.
- Arizona’s 56 points doubled the Wildcats’ highest total over the course of their eight-game losing streak.
- ASU allowed 40 or more points in five of six games during its season-ending six-game losing streak. Average points allowed during the skid: 46.7.
- Arizona scored touchdowns on four of its first five possessions in the second half. None of the drives lasted longer than four plays.
