With Kalen Deboer out the door in Seattle, the Huskies needed a big name to replace him. Who better than the coach of a top-15 Arizona team. A team, that out of all the games they played, gave the Huskies their toughest win in the championship run. Head Coach Jedd Fisch took an Arizona team that people projected to be at the bottom of the Pac-12, and coached them to the top of the national rankings.

The Huskies visit to Arizona was early in the season, when people didn’t know what this Arizona team would end up being. In Noah Fifita’s first career start, the Huskies were expected to dominate, but what really went down was a surprisingly close battle between two of the nations top teams. In the moment that game raised all sorts of red flags about the Huskies, but looking back it stands as one of their best wins of the season.

Fisch and the Wildcats came into the game sitting at 3-1, having lost in overtime to Mississippi State . With starting quarterback Jayden De Laura out with an injury the wildcats were forced to throw freshman Noah Fifita into action. In his first college start the Huskies hoped to get after the inexperienced QB and give him hell, but instead he thrived. In the game Fifita threw for an impressive 232 yards and 3 touchdowns. Fisch and Co. made the Huskies defense work. Fifita faced some, but definitely not enough pressure, and was allowed to hit his targets. This was the first time that the Huskies defense struggled, and proved to be one of the toughest passing schemes they would see all year.

On the flip side of the ball the Huskies puit up 31 points, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The Huskies had 21 in the first half, and in the fourth quarter they only scored 3. Fisch had his defense taking away big plays. Luckily for Penix and the Huskies they were able to operate well underneath, and rattled off double digit play drives time after time. But at the end of the game the Wildcat defense came up big holding the Huskies to just three plays. The Huskies ran 10 plays on the final three drives, as Arizona kept them in check.

Jedd Fisch took an Arizona team that wa projected to win a couple games, and finished 11th in the country. If it was 2024 they would be in the play-offs. When the Huskies rolled into town it wasn’t supposed to be a challenge, but the Wildcats showed the Huskies, and the nation what Jedd Fisch had built.