Nov. 7, 1992: Arizona beats No. 1 Washington
Arizona’s football team entered the 1992 season without any sort of nickname. The Wildcats were coming off their first losing season (4-7) since 1980. Then it got worse.
The UA lost at home to Washington State and then tied woeful Oregon State. An imposing game at No. 1 Miami followed.
Gulp.
But on that October day at the Orange Bowl, the Wildcats fought back. They lost 8-7, a memorable game in which it became apparent that Dick Tomey’s defense had the makings of what a few weeks later would be would become known as Desert Swarm.
After the bitter loss at Miami, the Wildcats routed No. 11 UCLA, stuffed No. 8 Stanford, beat Cal and New Mexico State. Suddenly, as if overnight, Arizona was ranked No. 12.
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That set the stage for one of the most anticipated showdowns in school history: a nationally-televised classic against No. 1 Washington, a team with a 22-game winning streak, a juggernaut that had outscored its last 14 Pac-10 foes an astonishing 524-130.
Each of the 58,510 fans who squeezed into Arizona Stadium that afternoon knew how dominant the Huskies had been: Washington embarrassed Arizona 54-0 and 54-10 the previous two seasons.
Over the next three hours, Desert Swarm became a national brand. Nose guard Rob Waldrop, tackle Tedy Bruschi, safety Tony Bouie, linebacker Sean Harris and cornerback Keshon Johnson dominated the Huskies, winning 16-3.
Eleven years earlier, Arizona shocked No. 1 USC at the Los Angeles Coliseum 13-10, which triggered the most successful decade of football in school history. Beating the No. 1 Huskies in ’92 launched a similar decade of UA football success.
The Wildcats’ defense was so dominating that as UW linebacker Jamal Fountaine left his team’s locker room, he told reporters: “To me, they’re No.1 now.”
He meant the Wildcats.
“I admit, sometimes I do get amazed,” said Waldrop, who would become a two-time consensus All-American and College Hall of Fame inductee. “I’ve never been part of anything like this in my life.”
Long after the game ended, Tomey sat on a folding chair in the corner of basement room at the stadium. A large group of reporters from coast-to-coast, the kind of people who usually didn’t come to Tucson unless it has something to do with basketball, carried on as if they had just discovered the mother lode. To them, it was a fresh and romantic story.
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How did it feel to be discovered after 15 years as a head coach?
“Well, it beats anything we’ve had lately,” Tomey said, typically understated.
He said he would go home, have dinner, watch a tape of the game, meet a few recruits and avoid any breast-beating.
“I like to stay home,” he said.
But he did give his rare captive audience something to take home to tell their readers.
“This team now has beaten Washington in three of five games,” he said. “It has beaten UCLA three out of four, and USC two in a row. At some point, the Arizona program needed to get some credit for what it’s been.”
The next morning on ESPN’s college football weekend review program, hosts Beano Cook and Dick Schaap began with Arizona’s victory over No. 1 Washington.
Cook: “Where did Tomey come from? Didn’t he coach at Hawaii?”
Schaap: “I think he walked across the ocean.”
Cook: “Arizona is the talk of college football, the hottest thing going.”
Where are they now? The UA’s team orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Kim Hewson, was part of the emotional postgame celebration. He wept as player after player embraced him.
During the UA’s scuffling 4-7 season of 1991, Hewson performed virtually all of the surgeries on the battle-scarred team. Vince Smith, Terry Vaughn, Billy Johnson, Barry Julian, Mike Ciasca, Richard Griffith and Sean Harris all required surgery. Johnson was the star of the UW game, rushing for 99 yards.
Hewson is now retired and lives in Telluride, Colorado.
How they did it: Arizona only completed five passes, behind George Malauulu. It relied on its defense.
“We were going to run inside, and then when it didn’t work, we were going to run inside again,” Tomey said. “That’s where we thought we could do the most damage and also keep them off our quarterback.
“Patience is what we had to have.”
Trailing 9-3, the Huskies’ last gasp was choked off with 8:19 left when Mark Brunell passed to Jason Shelley, who had the ball for a fraction of a second.
That’s when free safety Tony Bouie smacked into Shelley at about the UA 20. The ball popped in the air, coming to rest in the hands of cornerback Keshon Johnson. Game over.
