What to watch for when Arizona football visits West Virginia
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Arizona’s 2026 schedule includes five road games, to four different time zones. So far it has played in Provo and Pullman, losing the first and winning the second, and in the second half of the season will have tough trips to Lubbock and Manhattan.
But in between is the longest trek the program will have taken for a game in the contiguous United States in nearly 30 years. It’s almost 2,100 miles from Tucson to Morgantown, where the Wildcats will face West Virginia on Saturday morning.
This will mark only the fourth trip to the Eastern Time Zone for the UA since 2000, but third in as many seasons. It won at Cincinnati last November, more than 1,800 miles away, and in 2024 got blown out roughly 2,000 miles from home at UCF.
With a 3-hour time change, Arizona left on Thursday to get better acclimated. That meant practicing Thursday morning instead of evening, as is normally the case, the only change made to the weekly itinerary for a Saturday game. The UA practices in the mornings on Tuesdays and Wednesday, so body clocks shouldn’t be an issue.
“This is what I think: I think if you let that be an excuse, it will be,” UA coach Brent Brennan said of the travel. “I think if you let going on the road be an excuse, it will be. So we’re not in the excuse-making business. We’re in attacking the challenge ahead of us, which is playing a good West Virginia team at their place on Saturday at 9 a.m. Arizona time.”
The only times the UA has traveled farther for football games came in the 1990s, when they played at Penn State in 1995 and Miami in 1992, and a 1969 trip to Syracuse.
The visit to West Virginia will also serve as a reunion with former Wildcats coach Rich Rodriguez, who ran the UA program from 2012-17 and is the second year of his second tenure with the Mountaineers.
Here’s what to watch for when Arizona (4-1, 1-1 Big 12) takes on West Virginia (3-2, 0-2) on TNT:
Receiver rebuild
Arizona will be without its top three receivers for this game, as Tre Spivey is out for the season with a foot injury and both Chris Hunter and Giovanni Richardson have been ruled out via the availability report. All three were hurt in the first half against Cincinnati. Also out is tight end Cole Rusk, sidelined for a third straight contest.
That quartet has combined for 57 catches, 742 yards and five touchdowns. Not an insignificant amount of production to replace, but Arizona has been praising its depth at receiver and tight end since the spring and expects the next group to step up without a dropoff.
“I’m confident in the guys that can play,” offensive coordinator Seth Doege said. “We have a talented unit that somebody will step up and and fill the void.”
The key is the confidence those targets have in themselves as well as from the person throwing to them, UA career passing leader Noah Fifita.
“Our quarterback believes in them,” Doege said. “Last year we got a couple injuries early and I don’t know if Noah truly believed in some of those young guys that were having to play early, and quite frankly, I didn’t believe, I didn’t think they were ready to play, but we got a bunch of guys in that room that are ready to play. They just haven’t had their opportunity. I’m gonna let those guys go prove that they can do it, because I have full faith and I believe in them.”
Brandon Phelps started a game when Richardson was out the first time, with Rodney Gallagher also filling in for Richardson once in the slot. Both figure to start alongside Isaiah Mizell, whose 13 catches and 136 yards are both tops among available Wildcats.
Freshmen RJ Mosley and Caleb ‘Jet’ Smith will also see more targets, and we could see the first extended run for transfer receivers DJ Jordan and Jordan Ross.
Another potent run game, with a twist
Fresh off holding Cincinnati, which came into Tucson averaging 270 rushing yards per game, to just 74, Arizona now takes on a West Virginia team that’s even more productive on the ground. The Mountaineers are third nationally in rushing, gaining 294 yards per game with 17 TDs, and it’s basically a two-man show.
Cam Cook is second in FBS with 652 yards, while quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. has run for 574 yards and his 11 TDs are tied for most in the country. The latter reminds UA defensive coordinator of Khalil Tate, another beneficiary of RichRod’s run-heavy scheme.
“The twitch and the athleticism in what they do is very similar,” Gonzales said. “He’s slippery, he’s hard to tackle, and when both him and Cook, when they see a seam, they take it and they make you pay for it.”
Besides Hawkins, who has nearly 200 scramble yards but also has plenty of designed runs, Gonzales said what separates West Virginia’s run game from others Arizona has faced is the pace at which it plays. The Mountaineers average more than 73 offensive snaps per game but are near the bottom nationally in time of possession.
“They don’t care how you’re lined up,” Gonzales said. “They don’t care if you’re lined up. I think that’s really impressive that an offense can block people. They get on tracks and they try and mow you over, and the the excellence that they demand in that tempo. The offensive line, it’s impressive to watch the TV copies of them and how quick they move.
“The reason people do tempo a lot of time is they try and make you vanilla. Let’s see if they can make us vanilla.”
A chance for A LOT of points
At 60.5 points, the over/under for this game is the highest of the season for Arizona and behind only Colorado State/Texas State (64.5) on the Week 6 slate. Not surprisingly, the entire AZ Desert Swarm staff expects at least 59 points to be scored.
Arizona hasn’t allowed more than 28 points in its last 11 games, but West Virginia has scored at least 31 in four of five contests this season. It’s also allowed 86 points over the past two Big 12 games, leading defensive coordinator Zac Alley to declare just how bad his unit is.
West Virginia is last in the Big 12 in rushing, passing and total defense and only ahead of ASU in scoring defense because the Sun Devils just gave up 55 to Baylor. Nationally, the only power-conference team with worse overall defensive numbers is Stanford.
Maybe that means Arizona won’t open its first offensive possession with a sack for the fourth straight game?
“Obviously, you don’t want to take sacks in the first play of the game,” Doege said. “That’s something we’re continuing to work through. Every play has been a successful play from a standpoint that we got exactly what we want. We just didn’t execute, whether picking up the pressure or the quarterback being slow on his progression, whatever it may be.”
The most points Arizona has scored in a road game is 63, at UTEP in 2017 (with RichRod coaching!) and it dropped 59 three times including on ASU in the 2023 Territorial Cup. Since joining the Big 12 the high point total on the road has been 52 at Colorado last season.
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