Solomon overcame overthrows on big night

Surely you remember the part from “Major League” when — right here in Tucson, at Hi Corbett Field — Willie Mays Hayes was forced by his manager to do 20 pushups in practice every time he hit a pop-up. Later in the movie, when Hayes did it in a game, he dropped to the ground and went to work.

Well, Rich Rodriguez and quarterback Anu Solomon have a similar deal in place this year.

When the redshirt freshman overthrew one of his receivers in practice, Rodriguez made him run down field and get the ball himself.

So when Solomon overthrew DaVonte’ Neal twice and then Samajie Grant in the end zone early Friday night against UNLV, the quarterback thought about his deal with Rodriguez.

“Thankfully, it’s different in a game,” a smiling Solomon said after the UA’s 58-13 win over the Rebels.

The overthrows were about the only part of Solomon’s game that suffered Friday. Solomon, from Las Vegas, set a UA freshman record with 425 yards passing and completed 25 of 44 passes. He added four touchdowns and didn’t turn the ball over.

He’d surely like to eliminate the overthrows and has plenty of time to do so, but no one is going to complain about his debut performance.

After the misconnection to Grant, Solomon settled in and threw a perfect ball to Nate Phillips for a 39-yard touchdown on the next drive.

From there, Solomon was on cruise control. He tossed a 63-yard touchdown pass to Grant less than two minutes later, and added two more scores later, one to Neal and the other to Austin Hill.

“I thought the first touchdown to Nate gave him a little bit of confidence, and opened things up a little bit,” Rodriguez said. “They were going to challenge us to throw the ball. We knew that coming in, no matter who the quarterback was. They were going to bring the safeties down, bring some pressure and play cover zero and see if we could pitch and catch a little bit.”

Pitch and catch they did. Over and over and over again.

Solomon was 7 for 12 in the first quarter and 6 for 13 in the second. In the third quarter, he stepped it up, completing 11 of 16 passes for 167 yards. His first pass of the quarter was a 92-yard touchdown strike to Hill.

“He was putting the ball in the right places,” Hill said. “I think it shows a lot about him. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you can’t play.”

There weren’t a lot of tense moments in the blowout win, but Solomon showed poise when necessary. He was 9 for 14 for 137 yards and a touchdown on third downs and added a 31-yard run on a third-and-long.

Solomon’s 44 attempts tied the UA’s highest total from a season ago. B.J. Denker attempted 44 passes in Arizona’s 38-31 loss to USC. Denker attempted more than 30 passes in just six of the team’s 13 games last season. This year’s Wildcats will likely air it out more, simply because Rodriguez expects opposing defenses to play down closer to the line of scrimmage.

It could look more like the 2012 team, when Matt Scott attempted more than 50 passes four times.

“The truth is we probably have to open it up more simply because the way people are playing us,” Rodriguez said. “The way the system, or the way the offense works is you have to take what they give you. A lot of people say that, but we didn’t always do that because we were inexperienced at wideout, or whatever.

“Now we don’t have any reason, other than the inexperience at quarterback, not to run by the principles of the offense. We made a commitment to that in the first game, and we’ll continue to do that.”

That’s obviously fine with Solomon, who showed Friday he can also do some damage with his legs when needed. He rushed for 50 yards on eight carries. Though he thinks he has another level of speed in him.

“Everyone was telling me I looked slow; I felt slow,” Solomon said. “I’m still picking up the tempo of the offense. It will come.”

Extra points

• Solomon wasn’t the only freshman to impress Friday.

True freshman running back Nick Wilson had an 85-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. He finished with seven rushes for 104 yards in a reserve role to starter Terris Jones-Grigsby.

On his 85-yard run, Wilson went through a huge hole between center Steven Gurrola and left guard Cayman Bundage and took off. He was nearly caught at the end but zigzagged away from a UNLV defender to reach the end zone.

“It looked like he was doing the Nintendo weave at the end there to try to make sure he scored,” Rodriguez said. “He was fired up in the locker room afterward. He’s a talented guy. He’s going to play an awful lot for us. It was good to give him some experience in this first one.”

• Wilson and Jones-
  Grigsby (124) each went over 100 rushing yards, and Hill (110) and Grant (101) each went over 100 receiving yards. It’s the first time Arizona has ever had two players rush for 100 yards and two players tally 100 receiving yards in the same game.

• The UA has now had a 100-yard rusher in 18 straight games and 24 of the past 27.

• The Wildcats had four scoring drives in less than 40 seconds Friday, but then finished the game on a 19-play, 77-yard drive that spanned 9 minutes 18 seconds.