'Dreams turning into reality' for Noah Fifita, Arizona's starting quarterback

Arizona redshirt freshman quarterback Noah Fifita’s first touchdown pass to UA wide receiver and long-time best friend Tetairoa McMillan didn’t come at Arizona Stadium, or during any Wildcat game for that matter.

It happened as far back as the eighth grade.

Coached by Fifita’s father, Les Fifita, two were teammates for the Southern California-based youth football team Orange County Buckeyes. One game, against the Inland Valley Hurricanes, McMillan ran a go route, Fifita launched the football and “T-Mac” hauled it in for a touchdown.

“Like it has been the last seven years, I just throw it to him and he makes me look good,” Fifita said of McMillan. “Nothing has changed in the past seven years or so.”

The best-friend, quarterback-receiver relationship bled into their preps days at Servite High School in Anaheim, then ultimately their collegiate careers at the UA. Between their careers at Servite and Arizona, 38 of McMillan’s 52 touchdown receptions (73%) have been thrown from Fifita.

“It’s going to start sounding old, but it goes back to trust again. This is a guy who I’ve played with and has been my best friend since the eighth grade,” Fifita said. “We’re talking about six or seven years of playing with each other.”

Two of Arizona’s 11 third-down conversions in the Wildcats’ 27-10 win over 19th-ranked UCLA were highlight grabs by McMillan to extend UA drives.

McMillan finished with four catches for 81 yards and a touchdown. After a “ridiculous” 30-yard throw by Fifita to tight end Tanner McLachlan late in the third quarter, McMillan capped the drive with a turnaround touchdown near the left pylon of the north end zone despite smothering coverage by Bruins defensive back John Humphrey.

It “was put in the only place the ball could have gone for that catch,” Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch said, and “that clutch gene (McMillan) has” was on display, Fifita added.

“There’s a lot of belief in him and his ability,” Fifita said. “When you need a play to be made, I know wholeheartedly he’s going to make it.”

“You gotta give T-Mac credit,” said UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, who is 1-2 against Fisch. “We always felt he was one of the top receivers — if not, the top receiver — in the country.

“Sometimes you just gotta tip your hat. He’s a really good football player and I thought (Fifita) put the ball specifically where he can catch it and he came up with it,” Kelly said.

There was a period in time the Fifita and McMillan connection almost came to an end. Fifita was the first of Arizona’s Servite quartet committed to the Wildcats’ 2022 recruiting class, followed up by linebacker Jacob Manu and tight end Keyan Burnett, a former USC commit and son of “Desert Swarm” linebacker Chester Burnett. McMillan was planning on signing with Oregon until Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal accepted the same role at his alma mater Miami. The departure of Cristobal steered McMillan to Arizona to reunite with his “Juice County” friends.

Grounded in his faith, the 5-11, 194-pound Fifita was the sixth commit of Arizona’s 2022 recruiting class on April 4, 2021, pledging to the Wildcats at the church his family attends every week. After each of his five starts since taking over for the injured Jayden de Laura in the Wildcats’ come-from-behind win at Stanford, Fifita immediately finds his family, including his mother Winnona Fifita, standing in the first row of the stands.

“I started playing football because my uncles played football and I grew up in a football family. My only other values outside of football are faith and family,” Fifita said. “That’s how they raised me. I have so many role models in my family, starting with my grandfathers and my dad.”

The Wildcats’ 2022 recruiting class has played an instrumental role in the rise of Arizona football under Fisch, but coming to a program fresh off a 1-11 season wasn’t an easy sell for outsiders. Arizona running back Jonah Coleman was told, “you can do better” than the UA.

“I trusted the vision Coach Fisch had for us,” Coleman said.

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For Fifita, “there was no doubt, no questioning” the blueprint to rebuild the Arizona program back to relevance.

“At the end of the day, Coach Fisch believed in me before anyone else did,” Fifita said. “Sometimes it changes once you commit and once you sign. That never changed for me, our relationship never changed.

“I committed because of the person he was, not just the coach.”

In his first season, Fifita understudied de Laura, who transferred in from Washington State and gave the Wildcats a veteran quarterback with two years of Power 5 experience. Once de Laura suffered an ankle injury at the end of the third quarter at Stanford, Fifita was inserted into the game, leading the Wildcats down the field for a go-ahead touchdown drive and has remained the starter since then.

“It was tough to be patient, but I trusted that my time would come and trusted that my coaches had my best interest in mind,” Fifita said.

Trust, “that’s something my family instilled in me growing up,” Fifita said.

“Trusting the process, trusting the people in this building, we got great people in this building,” Fifita said. “It always starts at the top with Coach Fisch to (Arizona quarterbacks coach Jimmie Dougherty), and it goes all the way down to our training staff, our equipment staff and so on and so forth. There’s been a lot of trust.”

In 21 quarters as Arizona’s starter, Fifita has completed 140 of 185 passes (76%) for 1,499 yards, 14 touchdowns and four interceptions. Fifita’s previous four starts resulted in the quarterback earning Pac-12 Freshman of the Week honors, becoming the fourth player in conference history to earn the award four times in a season.

In the last two games against UCLA and Oregon State, Fifita completed 78% of his passes for six touchdowns, albeit while throwing two interceptions. One came Saturday on Arizona’s opening drive.

“He snapped right back,” Fisch said of Fifita. “He reset. And wound up making some great decisions the rest of the game — made some spectacular throws.”

Fifita admitted “I definitely gotta be better on those.”

“Shoot, I’m pretty much averaging an interception every game, so that’s something I definitely gotta improve on, definitely gotta change,” he said. “I think every interception up until this point has been on me. No tipped passes, no wrong routes, it’s all been on me. Reflecting on that, those mistakes have all been in different instances.

“We gotta eliminate those to continue to be successful.”

Besides the few, or four, blemishes in Fifita’s performances, helping quarterback the Wildcats to bowl eligibility with three games left in the regular season, and leading Arizona to three straight wins over ranked opponents for the first time in program history, “is definitely a blessing.”

“It’s been a great five weeks or so just being able to play,” Fifita said. “Obviously winning is the most important part of the game. Being able to win has been great, getting bowl eligible.”

Added Fifita: “A lot of dreams turning into a reality, but … this is just the beginning.

“There’s a lot more we got to improve on and a lot more to complete.”