An early showdown between Big 12 Conference title contenders is on tap when No. 15 BYU hosts Arizona on Saturday afternoon in Provo, Utah.
The host Cougars (1-0) have won eight in a row at LaVell Edwards Stadium, where Arizona (1-0) has not been victorious since 1975. BYU has won the last five meetings in the series, including a double-overtime thriller last season that saw it rally from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter.
“Losing that game last year was one of the hardest things we went through as a team,” Arizona running back Kedrick Reescano said. “Being able to go forward and get another opportunity, a lot of us have been preparing for that.”
Both teams had no trouble with their season openers against Big Sky teams. Arizona beat Northern Arizona 35-7 and BYU romped to a 63-7 victory over Utah Tech.
Two of the best quarterbacks in the conference, if not the country, will square off. BYU’s Bear Bachmeier is coming off a freshman season in which he threw for 3,033 yards and 15 touchdowns and ran for 11 more, while Arizona’s Noah Fifita is the active FBS leader in TD passes (75).
Bachmeier accounted for four TDs (three passing, one rushing) in the Cougars’ opener while Fifita threw two scoring passes and also moved into second on the school’s career yardage list with 9,462.
“He’s always efficient, and his football IQ is really impressive,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said of Fifita. “He’s got such a strong arm and knowledge of where to go with the ball. We have to find ways to disrupt the passing game.”
As much as the quarterbacks should factor into the outcome, as will the way each team defends them, the run game may be where things are decided. BYU senior LJ Martin led the Big 12 in rushing last season with 1,305 yards, leading to him winning the league’s offensive player of the year award. He had 54 yards on seven carries as the Cougars ran for 308 against Utah Tech.
“Their running back is a total stud,” Arizona coach Brent Brennan said of Martin, who had 162 yards and a TD against the Wildcats last season. “He’s powerful, he can finish runs, he’s hard to bring down. We got to get population of the football. One guy’s not going to get him down, and so you got to get him on the ground.”
Arizona held NAU to minus-7 yards on the ground, the first time since 2006 it limited an opponent to negative rushing yards.
The Wildcat run game is led by Reescano, who had two short TDs in the opener and has 11 in his last 11 games.
BYU will be without safety Raider Damuni (lower leg), who was injured against Utah Tech, but is expected to get back linebacker Isaiah Glasker after he sat out the opener. Glasker’s cousin, freshman Legend Glasker, had a whale of a collegiate debut last weekend when he caught two TD passes from Bachmeier and ran for another.
Saturday’s winner will get a leg up on the field for a spot in the Big 12 title game, which BYU played in last season and lost to Texas Tech.
“Our mindset this season is we want to be ready for 12 opportunities on the schedule and trying to create more,” Sitake said.