Jared CohenThe Arizona Wildcats are in for a big game on Saturday afternoon for homecoming as the Washington State Cougars come into Tucson.
The Wildcats, coming off a win on the road at Boulder last week, saw head coach Rich Rodriguez use both Anu Solomon and Jerrard Randall at the quarterback position during the game. Coach Rod explained the move like a manager in baseball seeing that one of his pitchers just did not quite have it that night and decided to throw someone else out there to make up for it. Rodriguez ultimately went back to Solomon down the stretch in their win over Colorado.
This week during his weekly press conference, Rodriguez said that he is not opposed to playing both over the course of the upcoming game against the Cougars and one Pac-12 Network Analyst and former Pac-12 quarterback is all for that.
“Why not use both of them?” Jake Plummer told Sports360AZ.com during his weekly segment with Brad Cesmat. “Both guys are skilled, can come in and do different things. Hopefully for U of A’s sake, if Anu can settle down and play his game, I think they are much more dangerous with him back there because he’s got both run and pass threats.”
So far this season, Randall has appeared in the UCLA and Stanford games while Solomon sat out with injury and then this last week against Colorado with this relief role as mentioned. Solomon on the year has 1404 yards passing with 13 touchdowns passing and one rushing and still not a single interception on the year. Randall has been much more of a threat with his legs in the game running for 544 yards and five touchdowns at over 11 yards per carry. He’s thrown for two touchdowns and has a completion percentage of 48%.
As for the task ahead of them with Washington State, Arizona has not been short of adversity when facing them in Tucson. The Wildcats lost to them the last time they met at Arizona in 2013. Plummer mentions that the Cougars have the fire power to make this a game once again.
“They are confident,” stated Plummer. “They are going to go down there and not be scared one bit of the Wildcats. The one thing that they are going to do well is throw the ball, move the ball. They’ve picked up their run game, (Jamal) Morrow and (Gerard) Wicks, they’ve definitely stepped it up and done some good things running the ball which is a shock for the air-raid out of Pullman.”
Washington State is led by quarterback Luke Falk, who has been the best in the conference through the air averaging 398.5 yards per game, and is fifth in the conference in total offense as they head to Tucson.
“That offense and Falk, they are playing really well,” Plummer explained. “They might get stopped or he might throw an interception but they are relentless. They go right back out there and march down the field.”
The Cougars have been a hard team to figure out as they had their surprise loss to Portland State at the beginning of the season but then beat the Oregon Ducks in an incredible performance in Eugene. They picked up right where they left off at home against Oregon State last week.
“The Oregon game was very impressive with the amount of long third downs they picked up,” mentioned Plummer. “Even fourth downs. That team just has no give up in them.”
Wildcats and Cougars kick off on Saturday at 1pm from Arizona Stadium.
