Cincinnati 'an incredible challenge' for bowl-bound Arizona Wildcats

Moments after the Arizona Wildcats celebrated bowl eligibility in the locker room after beating Kansas in Tucson, UA head coach Brent Brennan demanded more.

Getting to the postseason wasn’t the ceiling; it was the floor for Arizona.

“I’ll tell you this, I don’t know about y’all, but six (wins) ain’t enough for me,” Brennan told his team.

Each season has a multi-step process, in Brennan’s opinion. The first step, “How fast can we get to bowl eligible?”

“Once you get to the postseason, you get an extra spring practice,” Brennan added.

While several teams are in offseason mode and focused on 2026, bowl teams have multiple weeks of valuable practice time.

“Depending on how many games you win, you get two, three, four weeks of extra practice,” Brennan said. “That’s incredibly valuable for the team. For the freshmen who got here in June, that part of it is so incredible, and that’s really important. But you don’t want that to be a goal.

“That wasn’t the goal when we started in the fall. The goal wasn’t to just get to a bowl game. Now we’re in a situation where we have three big-time games coming up, three excellent opponents and two of the three are on the road.”

While “it was a great win for our program,” Brennan said, the Wildcats are entering the fourth quarter of the regular season, with games against Cincinnati (7-2), Baylor (5-4) and Arizona State (6-3) — a combined record of 18-9. The Wildcats’ two road opponents, Cincinnati and ASU, are a combined 13-5.

Brennan lauded Cincinnati, which is in the Big 12 championship picture, and said the Bearcats are “the best football team we’ve played this year.”

“They’ve done an outstanding job of building a roster and adding good players from the portal,” Brennan said.

Third-year head coach Scott Satterfield has led Cincinnati to its first winning season since 2022. Cincy quarterback Brendan Sorsby “is the best quarterback we have seen so far,” Brennan said.

Sorsby has passed for 2,064 yards, 21 touchdowns and two interceptions this season, while rushing for 453 yards and eight touchdowns. Similar to BYU’s Bear Bachmeier and Houston’s Conner Weigman, the 6-3, 235-pound Sorsby is a big-bodied quarterback capable of being an effective runner — a skillset that has given the Wildcats fits this season. Sorsby has the third-most rushing yards by a Big 12 quarterback this season behind Utah’s Devon Dampier and Bachmeier.

“He’s a clean passer and he’s extremely athletic,” Brennan said of Sorsby. “This is the most team speed we’ve seen.”

Between Sorsby and running backs Tawee Walker and Evan Pryor, who’s been nursing an ankle injury, the Bearcats have three Top 20 rushers in the Big 12 this season with a combined 1,464 yards, which is more than Arizona’s entire team (1,364).

Cincinnati wide receiver and Texas A&M transfer Cyrus Allen is 14th in the Big 12 with 514 yards, but is first in the conference with 10 touchdown receptions. Allen is “the best receiver we’ve played against. He’s excellent,” Brennan said.

“Just the combination of speed and talent, his ability to finish, he’s tough,” added Brennan. “They’ve done an awesome job. When you have someone who’s delivering the football with the accuracy and confidence that Sorsby has, they present a real challenge that way.”

Cincinnati “is an incredible challenge for us in all three phases,” Brennan said.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he added. “The players are really excited about getting back into the facility, getting back to work and putting together a plan to go play good football in Cincinnati this weekend.”

Craig named Big 12 POW

Arizona junior running back Quincy Craig’s late-game heroics in the Wildcats’ 24-20 win over the Kansas Jayhawks earned him Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week honors.

Craig shared the honor with Texas Tech running back Cameron Dickey. UCF defensive back Phillip Dunnam and linebacker Jacob Rodriguez were named Big 12 Defensive Players of the Week.

Iowa State returner Aiden Flora and Texas Tech kicker Stone Harrington received Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week honors, while West Virginia running back Diore Hubbard was named Big 12 Freshman of the Week. Iowa State’s offensive line and Texas Tech’s defensive line received the “Beef of the Week” Award.

Craig is the third Wildcat to earn Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week honors this season, joining running back Ismail Mahdi and quarterback Noah Fifita, who was Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week last week.

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Craig scored two touchdowns on five touches against Kansas, including the game-winning 24-yard touchdown with 39 seconds left.

Craig also had a touchdown reception just before halftime — his first touchdown catch since last November, when he was at Portland State. Craig ran a flat route near the right sideline and reached for the front pylon on the 3-yard line while getting tackled. Some coaches discourage — sometimes ban — players from reaching for the pylon, because while the reward is a touchdown, the risk is fumbling the football in the end zone, resulting in a touchback for the other team.

“So do we,” Brennan joked on Monday.

“I thought it was an incredible play,” Brennan said. “We needed that in the moment of that game, so I thought it was valuable. It’s kind of like the head coach going for it on fourth down and getting it or not getting it. If you get it, everyone is like, ‘Great call!’ If you don’t get, ‘You’re an idiot!’ That’s just the way it is. It’s a results thing.

“The devastation would’ve been the ball getting knocked out and being a touchback for Kansas, and we’ve seen that multiple times this season. That is not something we encourage, but it was a hell of a football play.”

Craig’s receiving touchdown put Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita at 67 career passing touchdowns, tying Nick Foles and Willie Tuitama for the most career touchdowns by a Wildcat.

Craig is one of three Wildcats to have a touchdown reception and a rushing touchdown in the same game this season, along with Tre Spivey and Javin Whatley.

Craig had three rushes for 47 yards, two receptions for 13 yards and two total touchdowns. Craig has the second-most rushing yards (281) at the UA this season behind Mahdi.

“If you’re going to have a good football team, you have to have more than one (running back),” Brennan said. “That position, they take such a beating. Having more than one has benefitted us throughout the season, because there have been times where players at that position have been nicked up and dinged up in some way. ... That kid, if you ever spend time with him, he’s got great energy, he has a huge smile and plays with a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of joy. He’s been a great addition to our football team.”

Prioritizing mental health ‘critical’ for Cats

Mental health has been a popular topic in the football space over the last week after the passing of Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland, whose death is being investigated as a suicide.

Just days after the 24-year-old Kneeland recovered a blocked punt in the end zone against the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football, Kneeland was found deceased with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Arizona general manager Gaizka Crowley spent one season with Kneeland at Western Michigan when the Wildcats’ GM was a part of WMU’s support staff and Kneeland was a standout for the Broncos.

The UA athletic department has services dedicated to student-athletes’ mental health at C.A.T.S. Sports Psychology. The UA football program relies on three full-time psychologists and doctors for mental health, including Dr. Rachel Webb, an assistant athletic director of sport psychology and wellness.

“I lean heavily in that space for them,” Brennan said. “It’s critical we support our kids. This generation is dealing with more stuff than any other generation we’ve ever coached before. ... Sometimes players think if they choose to talk to somebody and they’re going through a tough time, that somehow the information is going to come back to me, which never happens. That’s not what it’s there for.

“We get our players in a position to where they’re comfortable and get them to understand that we’re here to support them on their journey and whatever they need in the the mental health support, they’ll get the resources that they need.”

Extra points

— Arizona has held opponents to under 200 passing yards seven times this season, the most since 2009.

— Brennan, on allowing five sacks and 17 quarterback pressures against Kansas: “We’re going to fix those things. One time they got us, which happens. They made a good call and executed it; that happens sometimes. One of the times we made the wrong call up front, so we didn’t get the protection we needed to go. That’s something we’ve gotten to work on fixing yesterday. There’s nothing more important to us than protecting Noah Fifita.”

— Brennan said redshirt freshman Matthew Lado replaced the injured Ty Buchanan at left tackle instead of the previous starter, Rhino Tapa’atoutai, “because Rhino has been playing more on the right side, and this is more on the left side.” Buchanan, who left at the end of the first half against Kansas, is expected to play against Cincinnati on Saturday.

— The FS1 broadcasters for the Arizona-Cincinnati game on Saturday are Connor Onion (play-by-play) and Mark Helfrich (analyst).

— The Big 12 announced Edward Jones, a national investment company based in St. Louis, as the title sponsor of the Big 12 Championship. Edward Jones replaced Dr. Pepper, which was the title sponsor from 2018-24. The Big 12 title game is on Saturday, Dec. 6, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.