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A season to forget

It ended more than a month before it was supposed to.

When the then-No. 4-ranked Arizona football team began the 1999 season, the 100th anniversary of the program, expectations were for the season finale to be in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 1 or in New Orleans on Jan. 4.

Instead, the season ended in Tempe with a 42-27 loss to Arizona State this Saturday.

A team expected to challenge for its first-ever Rose Bowl, and some said even the national championship, instead finished 6-6 overall, 3-5 in the Pacific 10 Conference.

It was not for a lack of effort on the part of a few individuals, but as a team, the Wildcats could never truly come together.

Whether it was overconfidence due to the preseason hype, or lingering effects from last year's remarkable 12-1 campaign or just a lack of mental toughness, nothing worked in 1999.

In the end, there were no words left, no excuses, no "what ifs." There was nothing.

All that remained was a hollow, empty feeling in the hearts and minds of the players and coaches.

Head coach Dick Tomey, having just completed the first of four seasons of his $2 million contract, isn't going anywhere, like it or not.

UA can't afford to pay him the remainder of the contract, which it would do if Tomey was fired.

"Well, I am disappointed with both the way we played and with the 6-6 record," he said. "The way we played defense, the turnover margin and our offensive production are the most disappointing."

Here is a breakdown of the season-long breakdown:

Defense fails to be consistent

Against Penn State, the Arizona defense couldn't tackle. Against Stanford, it couldn't put any pressure on Cardinal quarterback Todd Husak in order to stop him from toasting the UA secondary.

Poor tackling, an inconsistent pass rush and a secondary that ranked as the worst in school history combined to leave UA a .500 team.

"We had some good defensive games against USC and UCLA, but we didn't play well as a whole all season long," Tomey said.

The defense was laden with seniors, including linebackers Marcus Bell and DaShon Polk, safeties Rafell Jones and Greg Payne and cornerbacks Leland Gayles and Kelvin Hunter.

But all that experience couldn't produce any sort of consistency, leaving some of the seniors to scratch their heads as to what happened.

"It happened, that's life I guess," Bell said after the ASU game, fighting back tears as he spoke. "I've got to put this behind me and remember all the good times that I had here. All these great players that I've played with. I just want to tell my guys, my teammates, I feel bad for them, the seniors I played with. I don't know, it just doesn't feel good."

Another key problem was that the Wildcats finished -12 in turnover margin this season. Last year they were +10.

UA gave up the ball far too often and did little to get it back.

Offense can't score when it matters most

Arizona went inside its opponents' 20-yard line 43 times this year. The Wildcats came away with only 23 touchdowns and five field goals.

"We weren't productive on offense even though we led the league in total offense (471.9 yards per game)," Tomey said. "That is just a meaningless stat."

The kicking game's struggles hurt UA over and over. With no confidence in kickers Mark McDonald (1-for-10 in FG) and Sean Keel (5-for-8) the Wildcats had to rely on big plays to score most of their touchdowns.

But all too often they were forced to punt despite being inside their own 40-yard-line.

"The season as a whole there we some key plays we needed to make that we didn't make," UA senior quarterback Keith Smith said. "It's a tough way to go out right now."

Inflated expectations

The preseason hype did get to the team. Or maybe it didn't. The impact of the high expectations and media hype varied from player to player.

"I don't know, everybody has their own different feelings and beliefs of how the season was portrayed at the beginning," UA senior free safety Rafell Jones said. "A real individual would look at it as just talk. It's because we have to have results. We have to have an outcome. The outcome has to be good in order for the preseason to stay true. We didn't do that."

Tomey said that in retrospect, scheduling the season-opener at Penn State was a bad idea.

"I'm sure it was damaging," he said of the 41-7 loss. "It damaged our confidence greatly and the fact that it was such a high-profile game I think was the most damaging.

"There were a lot of high expectations for us and we obviously didn't handle it (the pressure) very well. I don't think you can help but believe the hype to some extent but that doesn't excuse the way we played all season. We had plenty of chances to come back."