Monday October 22, 2001

Ryan Finley

I'm sad to say that I haven't learned a whole lot in college. But after UA's heart-breaking 31-28 loss to Washington Saturday in Seattle, I was reminded of something I learned in professor William Bunis' Sociology 101 class a few years back.

During the semester, he brought up something he called the Harvard-Yale Game Theory (or something like that). The study was this: a group of sociologists went to a Harvard-Yale football game and interviewed both teams' fans following the game. What they found was that each side, although they watched the same game, saw a completely different one.

Perception is everything, in other words. While some people - probably yuppie, latte-drinking, purple-and-gold wearing Washington fans - saw Saturday's UW win as a comeback of heroic proportions, I saw the game as a demonstration of grit and determination from the UA football team, something John Mackovic's Wildcats hadn't really shown me up until now.

For the first time all year, the Wildcats were shoved, and managed to shove back.

There are people out there who saw Arizona's loss as another example of the old adage that says that bad teams find ways to lose games. After all, it was UA that scored with just over five minutes left in the game to go ahead, only to allow the Huskies to drive the length of the field and win the damn thing. There are people who said the Wildcats were handed the game - after all, UW had four turnovers - and couldn't hang onto it.

Wrong.

In my mind, it was a minor miracle that the Wildcats - playing with a backup (and freshman) quarterback and an anemic defense in a raucous stadium against one of the best teams in the nation - managed to hang in there at all.

Gone was junior quarterback Jason Johnson, knocked into a Darryl Strawberry-like stupor at the end of the first quarter after taking a hit from a UW defender. Following the game, Mackovic said Johnson couldn't remember throwing UA's first two touchdowns. I saw the hit, and I'm surprised he could remember not to soil himself after the shot.

In Johnson's place, Mackovic used freshman John Rattay, who - when he wasn't tripping over his own feet after a snap - managed to play like the quarterback who first committed to Tennessee before deciding to come play for UA.

He was good. Not great yet, but good. Completing 9 of 18 passes for more than 100 yards isn't too bad, especially considering he took more shots than a prize fighter with two hands tied behind his back.

On the other side of the ball, the Wildcats used their bend-and-then-bend-some-more-and-then-bend-even-more defense to keep the Huskies from absolutely destroying them. When you give up 149 points in your previous three games combined, allowing 31 to a good UW team isn't so bad.

Not to say Arizona is even in the same category as the Oregons, Washingtons and UCLAs of the world yet.

If anything, the collapse toward the end of Saturday's game showed that the Wildcats are missing a kind of killer instinct that all good teams have. The kind of us-against-the-world attitude that Tomey loved to play off has yet to emerge in Arizona's attitude at all this season. But I saw a flicker of hope in what has been a hopeless Pac-10 season.

The Wildcats played like the national title was on the line in a game where they could have just rolled over and died. They managed to stand toe-to-toe with one of the country's best teams and bloody them a little bit.

At least that's the way I saw it.