Arizona Scores 42 Straight and Buries Northern Illinois
Northern Illinois led 10-0. That is the whole good news, and it was gone by the 11:13 mark of the second quarter. Arizona scored 42 straight points after that and won 42-17.
Noah Fifita did most of it. He was 31 of 34 for 325 yards and four touchdown passes, to Chris Hunter III (38 yards), Isaiah Mizell (14), Tre Spivey (10) and Tyler Powell (3), and he added a 30-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. Thirty-one of 34. That is a 91 percent completion rate, and it still was not his only big number: Arizona got 357 passing yards on the day against 255 for Northern Illinois.
The game turned in the second quarter, when Arizona scored 21 points. The last of them was a 69-yard punt return by Caleb Smith with 2:13 left in the half, and it made it 28-10 at the break. Powell's touchdown in the third made it 35-10 entering the fourth. Northern Illinois, to its credit, kept playing, and got a 1-yard Elijah Porter run with 13 seconds left to make the final look a little better.
NIU did not play badly in the totals. It threw for 255 yards, had 341 total yards and gave the ball away zero times, against Arizona's 443 yards and one interception. It simply lost the score by a mile. The Huskies are 0-3, and Arizona is 2-1, with a quarterback who just posted the best fantasy night of his young season.
For fantasy, three Arizona players were the top scorers on the field, and the quarterback was the one you wanted.