Greg Hansen: Wildcats spit the bit in most excruciating loss yet

Seven minutes before kickoff Friday night, a trumpet player from the Pride of Arizona marching band stood alone at the 50-yard line and played “Call to the Post,” heard every year before the Kentucky Derby.

In horse racing, it’s a final alert for thoroughbreds to get to the starting line. In football? I’ve never heard “Call to the Post” at any football game, and especially at Arizona Stadium.

But as if on cue, Arizona responded to the call like one of UA alumnus Bob Baffert’s Derby winners, like maybe Authentic or Justify. The Wildcats took a 13-0 lead over heavily-favored Washington. They limited the Huskies to 141 yards over the first three quarters, leading 16-7.

And then Authentic and Justify disappeared.

Arizona played the final 15 minutes more like the name of another Baffert Derby winner, Real Quiet. The Wildcats didn’t win, place or show. They simply went quietly, losing 21-16. It was the most excruciating of Arizona’s 19 consecutive losses, a combination of hopefulness followed by inevitable hopelessness.

In a game of 121 total plays, it took just three for the Wildcats to continue to tear a hole in the Pac-12 and Arizona record books for consecutive losses. The Wildcats turned to Mildcats at crunch time.

102421-tuc-spt-hansencol-p2 — Arizona quarterback Will Plummer takes a big hit from Washington linebacker Jordan Lolohea during Friday’s fourth quarter.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

The first misplay was quarterback Will Plummer throwing a pass to Washington defensive lineman Tui Letuligasonea instead of one of his eligible receivers, a screen pass that the Huskies intercepted and turned into a 71-yard drive and touchdown.

The second was UA coach Jedd Fisch choosing to punt rather than take a chance on fourth-and-2 at his 31-yard line with 10 minutes remaining. That was the UA’s last chance to score. After you’ve lost 18 straight, why not take a chance?

The third was an illegal substitution penalty — 12 men on the field — with 2:23 remaining after Washington was to punt. Game over.

Three plays. Fisch used the word inexcusable. Either way, the streak continues.

“The second half we continued to get in fistfights with our hands tied behind our back,” Fisch said. “If we’re going to continue to turn the ball over and commit 10 penalties in a game, we’re going to continue to be a very disappointed group in the locker room.”

Fisch wound up talking about a “Hail Mary” pass in the postgame interview room. It was symbolic of Arizona’s football program. Every game seems like a Hail Mary situation.

“The story that is truly being written as we speak is that you go from losing big to losing small, to winning small to winning big,” he said. “I have all the expectations in the world that we’re going to go from winning small to winning big in the future.”

Watch: Jedd Fisch, players react to Arizona Wildcats' loss to Washington

There’s another horse racing analogy that fits Friday’s collapse: Spitting the bit. What makes that so disappointing is that Washington showed up as if in a trance, looking every bit the team that lost at home to Montana last month, every bit the team that lost at Oregon State.

At halftime, it seemed as though Arizona had too much speed — too much everything — for the Huskies. Washington had just 65 total yards at half. Arizona looked like the Desert Swarm defenses of a quarter-century ago.

The few fans who showed up at Arizona Stadium, a crowd announced at 30,880 but was probably closer to 20,880, couldn’t have been blamed if they were planning a way to rush the field and tear down the goal posts the way Northwestern did when it broke an FBS-record 34 game losing streak in 1982.

But in reality, Arizona wasn’t really setting a pace too fast for the sleepwalking Huskies. In horse racing, horses that seem to accelerate are in reality slowing down less than the horses they overtake.

By the fourth quarter, the Wildcats almost crawled to the finish line. The Huskies awoke and ran their best in the stretch.

Arizona hasn’t had a good stretch run since, when, 2014?

As the Wildcats move on and prepare for next week’s game at USC, they’ll surely see signs of progress in the film room and, if nothing else, add to the growth of a we’re-almost-there mentality.

Believe, right?

Friday wasn’t a total no-show like the unaccountable 21-19 loss to NAU. And it wasn’t an eternally humbling loss like last year’s 70-7 Territorial Cup.

It was 45 minutes of progress in a 60-minute game. That’s Stage I of this reconstruction project.

The Wildcats did a lot of things winning teams do on Friday. They blocked a punt and got a field goal out of it. They limited Washington to 305 total yards, 104 below the UW’s average. And they were resourceful, turning receiver Jamarye Joiner into an effective option quarterback, which was the only chance they had to beat Washington.

Somehow, down to quarterback Nos. 3 and 4, which is unprecedented in modern UA football history, the Wildcats edged closer to a streak-ending victory than seemed realistic.

What’s next?

On Saturday, longtime football softie Kansas, which has lost 23 of its last 25 games, opened the gates at Booth Stadium and invited fans to attend for free. Much like Friday’s UA-Washington game, the Jayhawks played an inspired first half, leading mighty Oklahoma 10-0.

Then reality — and the late-arriving Sooners — hit back.

Is free football next at Arizona Stadium, too?