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The Wolf Pack will continue their early season home stand when they welcome the Arizona Wildcats at Mackey Stadium on Sept 12th. It is a rematch of last year's contest when the Wolf Pack were down 21-6 to Arizona but mounted a comeback to tie the game at 21-21 midway through the third quarter. But Wildcats QB Anu Solomon threw two touchdown passes late in the third quarter and early in the fourth quarter to put the Wildcats up for good. Despite Nevada scoring a touchdown late in the game, it was not enough as the Wildcats defeated the Wolf Pack 35-28.
The Wildcats return some very talented playmakers from last year's team that won ten games for the first time since 1998, won the Pac-12 South division and played in the Fiesta Bowl where they lost to Boise State 38-30. For Arizona, their leader on offense is sophomore quarterback Anu Solomon who threw for 3,793 yards and threw 28 touchdowns as a freshman which broke Arizona school passing records for a freshman.
In last year's game against Nevada, Solomon threw for 278 yards and three touchdowns while completing 22 of 26 passes. The top offensive weapons who will be helping Solomon are running back Nick Wilson who ran for 1,375 yards and 16 touchdowns last year and wide receiver Cayleb Jones who caught 73 passes for 1,019 yards. Against Nevada last year, both Wilson and Jones both had very good performances as Wilson ran for 171 yards while Jones caught nine passes for 116 yards.
On defense for Arizona, they are led by junior linebacker Scooby Wright who won the 2014 Nagurski Trophy for the best defensive player in the nation. Wright last year recorded 163 tackles with 29 of those being tackles for loss and Wright also recorded 14 sacks. The Wildcat secondary is young and inexperienced but they make up for it with a front seven that excels at stopping the run and getting to the quarterback as a team, the Wildcats recorded 38 sacks last year.
Last year, when Nevada played Arizona, the Wolf Pack were able to come back from a 15 point deficit and give Arizona all it could handle before eventually losing the game. But the Wolf Pack had Cody Fajardo at quarterback and he is not there anymore and the quarterback situation is still uncertain for Nevada. Also, the Wildcats have too much overall talent on both sides of the ball for Nevada to handle. The Wolf Pack will play tough since they are at home but in the end, Arizona comes away with the win.