EL PASO — At the end of the first half of Arizona’s 63-16 win over UTEP on Friday night, the Wildcats lined up three freshmen defensive linemen.
Earlier, linebacker Tony Fields II had a sack and Colin Schooler returned an interception 63 yards.
Kylan Wilborn has been Arizona’s best pass rusher this season, and against the Miners he managed another tackle-for-loss.
Anthony Pandy hadn’t played yet before Friday; he sacked UTEP quarterback Mark Torrez in the third quarter.
Safety Scottie Young had three tackles, one week after Pro Football Focus rated his performance against Houston as the 10th-best in the country for a freshman.
The Wildcats’ youngest players made giant impacts in the team’s final nonconference game of the season. Some stood out more than others.
JB Brown was recruited as a middle linebacker; he morphed into a defensive end/outside linebacker hybrid on Friday and had two quarterback hurries.
By the end of the night, freshman quarterback Rhett Rodriguez was in the game, handing the ball off to freshman Nathan Tilford, who wound up scoring two touchdowns.
Arizona has completed 20 passes to tight ends since coach Rich Rodriguez was hired in 2012; through three games, Bryce Wolma leads all UA pass-catchers with 11 receptions and scored his first touchdown on Friday.
Their coach said this was coming. He’s been talking up these freshmen since before most of them were even committed to the UA.
Rodriguez has been building up his 2017 class since March of 2016, six months before Arizona sputtered and went 3-9.
After a spring practice, the same day a major recruit committed to play for the Wildcats, Rodriguez declared that he “would be surprised if we don’t put together one of the best recruiting classes this school’s ever had.”
That was when there was only a handful of recruits. There were four handfuls by Week 1, and he continued the chorus, before, during and after the worst campaign of his five years in Tucson.
Even after a wave of decommitments leading up to signing day, including from some of Arizona’s highest-rated players, he held true, though maybe made it sound less hyperbolic: “This could be my best recruiting class at Arizona.”
Rodriguez has since doubled down on his praise of the class. Through fall camp, he practically claimed he would play an entire lineup of freshmen if he had to.
On Friday, he nearly did — and he looked smart in doing it. The freshmen flashed potential, showing that Rodriguez wasn’t wrong to hype his young players. They may, in fact, comprise his best-ever recruiting class.
“They’re playmakers,” said junior cornerback Jace Whittaker. “Age doesn’t really matter once you hit the field… We don’t say, ‘You’re a freshman; it’s OK to make that mistake.’ They provide playmaking ability, so that’s how we treat them.”
Now comes the hard part — Arizona opens Pac-12 play next Friday against Utah, and it’s the start of a nine-game dash through a difficult conference slate.
If Rodriguez’s job security hangs in the balance, he can’t exactly afford this “best class ever” of freshmen to run into the proverbial freshman wall, to make freshman mistakes.
Too many freshmen are playing too many important roles for Arizona to stomach that.
“I feel like I got some experience in these first three games, but conference play is a whole other thing,” Schooler said. “That’s going to be a new beast.”
Rodriguez is banking on Fields and Wolma and Young and Wilborn and Schooler to step up. So far, so good. But it’s a long season.
“Sometimes we hold our breath because they are true freshmen,” Rodriguez said. “Everything is going to be a new experience for them.”
Rodriguez needs them to live up to the build-up.
