Hansen: Another year of underachievement (2007)

TEMPE

At the end of his college football career Saturday night, UA linebacker Spencer Larsen delivered yet another state-of-the-team speech that didn't leave much to the imagination.

Best team won. Arizona lost. No surprise there.

"We could've accomplished a lot more,'' said Larsen. It sounded like a recording.

Larsen began by talking about a missed field goal against Wisconsin in 2004. He gave reference to a 2005 game in which a late fumble let Oregon off the hook. He said he lost count of the many near-misses.

Could've beat USC. Should've beat New Mexico. Stanford. Larsen acknowledged going 0-4 against Arizona State.

It was a monologue on a sorry decade of Arizona football given by the UA's best player, one who would've fit in nicely years ago with Tedy Bruschi or Ricky Hunley. Instead, in an unfortunate case of bad timing, Larsen went out in a 20-17 loss to the Sun Devils, a game that was a template for the UA's unpolished season.

ASU wasn't overpowering, in fact, it was sometimes difficult to believe that this is a team that is 10-2 and a few weeks ago was in the lead grouping for a national championship.

But it was good enough to beat the Wildcats the same way BYU and New Mexico were good enough to beat the Wildcats, who played soft early, fell behind and rallied much too late. With the exception of the 1999 UA team that essentially cost Dick Tomey his job, the '07 Wildcats became the UA's biggest underachiever since the school joined the Pac-10 in 1978.

"We lost to a number of teams that are mediocre at best,'' the Pac-10's leading tackler said. "It all started in my freshman year when all the seniors came up to me and said: 'Hey, we're going to (athletic director) Jim Livengood's office; we're going to get the coach fired.'"

It wasn't a good omen.

The new coach, Mike Stoops, is 17-29 in four years and twice has been left on the doorstep, straining while on tiptoes, waiting for a kiss that would send Arizona to a bowl game and into the lowest kingdom of football paradise.

"The program's not perfect,'' said Larsen, who indicated that not everyone on the roster is "on board yet,'' but finished by saying "we're getting closer.''

Nobody wants to hear that the UA is getting closer. Twelve months ago they were "closer.'' They were a victory over ASU from a 7-5 season and an end to their self-enforced bowl prohibition. And here they are, 12 months later, a loss to ASU from the same place.

What follows is another winter of discontent. The Wildcats couldn't win the Big One, or get to the Big One, because they lost so many little ones along the way.

It was an underwhelming season, not just because Arizona lost to a pair of Mountain West Conference teams, but because its typical late-season tease included some tainted victories over quarterback-poor UCLA and Oregon.

When it had to beat a good team, and with 10 victories ASU cannot be identified as anything else, the Wildcats didn't know how. On a night Willie Tuitama absolutely needed to be sharp, he struggled with his control.

And because ASU's defense jammed Arizona's unskilled attempt at a running game, the Wildcats went only as far as Tuitama could take them.

"It just seemed like we couldn't make a play,'' said Stoops. You can fill in the blanks after that. Dropped passes. Inopportune penalties. A series of misplays at the worst possible times.

"I'm disappointed that we got in this situation, when you look at it in the entirety of the season,'' said Stoops. "I think we expected more.''

It would be easy to suggest that Stoops and his staff were seriously out-coached by the Sun Devils' Dennis Erickson. On a night that ASU had some physical issues, including quarterback Rudy Carpenter's aching right thumb, the Sun Devils played it safe. They were like a 40-year-old junkball pitcher beating you with off-speed stuff, scattering 11 hits, relying on defense and a timely double down the line.

The Sun Devils were resourceful. The Wildcats were a stubborn victim.

Erickson said he was disappointed in the style of his team's victory, but added "to me, it doesn't make any difference if it's 20-17 or 55-52.''

Arizona opens the 2008 football season against either Idaho or Toledo, it really doesn't matter which one or in what order, but 12 months from now the Wildcats will close Mike Stoops' fifth season against Arizona State.

That gives Stoops 12 months to recruit some reinforcements for his senior-laden defense and 12 months to find a way to run the ball better than they ran it this season. More importantly, it will be Stoops' fifth chance to attempt to make the ASU game a battle for pride rather than a game in which so much is at stake.

Alas, the ASU game is much easier on the nervous system if you've already beaten Stanford and Oregon State and a bowl-game itinerary is in the works. Nobody can testify to that more than Mike Stoops.