Arizona Rolls Cincinnati 34-7 for the Bearcats' First Loss
Cincinnati arrived 4-0 and left 4-1, and the game was never close enough to argue about. The Bearcats did not score until there were 1:56 left, and Arizona had already put up 34.
The Wildcats led from the first score. Kedrick Reescano ran in from 10 yards in the first quarter, Michael Salgado-Medina kicked a 23-yard field goal on the last second of the half, and it was 10-0 at the break. The second half was where it got ugly. Noah Fifita ran for a score from 8 yards, then threw a 24-yard touchdown to Brandon Phelps, and Salgado-Medina added a 35-yard field goal early in the fourth. Fifita finished it with a 5-yard pass to Tyler Powell. JC French IV's 2-yard run with 1:56 left kept the shutout from happening.
The yardage says the same thing as the scoreboard. Arizona had 522 total yards to Cincinnati's 227, 238 rushing yards to 74, and 41 carries to 27. Arizona threw one interception and Cincinnati threw none, which tells you how little that mattered.
Arizona is 4-1 and Cincinnati is 4-1, and one of those teams looked a lot better than the other. (I will not say which.)
Cincinnati's own numbers were thin. The Bearcats threw for 153 yards and ran for 74, and the lone score came on a 2-yard run with the game long decided. Arizona did the opposite, spreading the ball around: Fifita threw for 284, and the Wildcats added 238 on the ground. Both teams had three sacks, so the gap was everywhere else.
For fantasy purposes, Fifita had a very good day without a great one: 31.1 points. Reescano and Powell each had 15 or more.