It would be one thing if this were a column about Arizona men’s basketball. The Wildcats were a class above everyone else in the Pacific-10 Conference, winning with ease and in Lute Olson’s case, never breaking a sweat, never a hair out of place.
But this is a column about Arizona football.
The scary thing is when it comes to playing Oregon, Mike Stoops’ football team has learned a thing or two about stopping a season in its tracks from all that basketball success.
After two straight losses and losing two quarterbacks to the Wildcats in three years, Oregon has to make its point and win big this Saturday.
A squeaker won’t do here two weeks before the Civil War.
“Revenge from last year,” sophomore linebacker Casey Matthews said. “That’s definitely in the back of our minds.”
Losing to Arizona has predicted losing to the Beavers the past two years, and it’s easy to see why.
Arizona embarrassed the No. 2 Ducks on national television last November, watching as Dennis Dixon’s ACL officially went out for good in 2007, then kept the body blows coming. Arizona 34, Oregon 24. When the term ‘No. 2’ curse is used, the clip of thousands of Arizona students rushing the field usually follows. Still searching for the right freshman quarterback to throw onto the field against Oregon State, the home team lost the Civil War for the first time since 1996.
If you want to talk about embarrassed, go back to 2006, when the Wildcats didn’t even make it close, winning 37-10 – in Autzen Stadium. Still hungover from their second-straight blowout loss – the first coming from USC – the Ducks lost in Corvallis because of field goal trouble.
Don’t forget about 2005, when the Ducks lost Kellen Clemens for the season against the Wildcats in Tucson, needing a returned fumble for a touchdown to win it.
“All our coaches seemed like they’re always talking bad about them,” Matthews said. “About how they’re mad, how they (the students) were cheering when both the quarterbacks went down.”
Fast forward to last week and Jeremiah Masoli’s final drive in the pouring rain. The rain came down almost as hard as the periodical boos from the stands during the game, but Masoli held it together. It looked improbable, but the Ducks won, and for a second, 59,000 people forgot they’d been standing out in a rainstorm for three and a half hours.
I’m just not sure if that’s a sign that the Ducks are a resilient team or one barely hanging on to its Holiday Bowl hopes. Blowing out the Wildcats could change that. I don’t see why it couldn’t happen, either.
Oregon comes into this game knowing it can win ugly, per Stanford. That shouldn’t be a safety blanket, because the team knows losing ugly is pretty easy, too – see Cal versus Oregon.
But for the first quarter last Saturday, we saw the team that beat up on Washington, Utah State, Washington State and Arizona State. Up 17-3, the Ducks should have taken the game by the horns and taken the possibility of a last-minute drive out of the picture.
They could have, but they didn’t. It needs to happen this weekend and I believe it can. Should they not, the Ducks’ trip to Corvallis looks to be trouble as well.
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Ducks seek revenge for past upsets
Daily Emerald
November 13, 2008
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