Two southwest teams sharing a state border could not be in more different places in their respected programs.
As the Arizona Wildcats and New Mexico Lobos gear up to play one another on Saturday, Dec. 19, the postseason experience in the two programs is hard to overlook.
For Arizona, it is just another bowl game, particularly a game head coach Rich Rodriguez is quite familiar with.
In 2012, his first season as head coach for the Wildcats, Rodriguez led his squad to a thrilling 49-48 victory over Nevada, scoring two touchdowns in the final two minutes of the game, to sneak the Gildan New Mexico Bowl trophy back to Tucson.
For New Mexico, the squad gets an unofficial home game for its first appearance in the postseason since 2007, the first of head coach Bob Davie’s tenure with the Lobos. In comparison, Rodriguez has led his team to the postseason each of the four years at the helm of the Arizona program.
“My goal when I got to Arizona was to build the best football program in America,” Rodriguez said during Wednesday’s media luncheon. “We’re not there, certainly...but I think we’ve made enough progress that we can see us getting there and playing in the postseason is part of that.”
However, despite the postseason resume, Arizona will not get the experience of playing at a neutral site, coming to UNM’s home turf to partake in both teams' final game of the 2015 campaign.
This upcoming week leading up to the New Mexico Bowl, the Wildcats will be focused on finishing up finals, while UNM’s finals week finished up Friday. Rodriguez said some of his players will be forced to take some of their final exams during the team’s visit across state lines.
Not only will UNM’s fall semester have come to a close, but the Lobos will receive the luxury of practicing all week at University Stadium, while the Wildcats won’t arrive until Wednesday. Rodriguez described the short time spent in Albuquerque as being all business.
“Because you’re not here a long time, I think most bowls are doing it now, you’re not coming in for a week, you’re coming in for three days,” Rodriguez said. “It’s kind of more of a business trip, but the first day they’ll enjoy and have a little bit of fun.”
Although Rodriguez stated there are various disadvantages his team will have to endure, the head coach did say his team is excited at the opportunity to take home its second Gildan trophy in four years.
“I don’t know if they’re excited about playing a road game, that makes it a little bit more challenging,” Rodriguez said. “I know they wanted to be a bowl and that was one of our goals as the season went along, to be able to get bowl eligible.”
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Arizona barely made the cut to become bowl eligible, fending off Utah at home in a 37-30 double overtime thriller in the second to last game of the season to reach the magical number of six wins to warrant bowl eligibility. The Wildcats (6-6) dropped the final contest against in-state rival ASU 52-37 in the final game of the regular season.
Rodriguez’s squad was forced to play 12 consecutive weeks without a bye week, something the head coach said he knows has worn on his team. However, the difficulties the Wildcats have faced throughout the season - and the disadvantage of playing "on the road" - will warrant a well deserved game, Rodriguez said.
“Our players haven’t had much of a break. They get a little bit of a break the last two weeks, as far as from a football standpoint,” Rodriguez said. “But they have had no breaks academically and athletically, total. They’ll get a chance to have a total, after this game’s over, a good three-week break before we start back up.”
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistantsports@dailylobo.com or on twitter @Liam_CE.
