Final Huddle: Arizona Hands Cincinnati Bearcats First Home Loss of 2025 Season

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats' dreams of winning the 2025 Big 12 Championship took a big hit on Saturday after a 30-24 loss to the Arizona Wildcats.

Cincinnati started well with a 14-7 lead in the first quarter, but bad play from Brendan Sorsby (15-28 for 154 yards, one TD, two INTs) and a defensive hemorrhage erased that lead quickly.

Arizona averaged a whopping 6.5 yards per play, which would rank top 10 nationally across this full season. It was the first-ever meeting in football between these two schools, and leaves Cincinnati without full control of their Big 12 title path. They now need to win the final two games against BYU and TCU, plus get a loss out of Utah in its final three games.

Cincinnati is now 7-3 overall and will almost assuredly drop out of the College Football Playoff rankings after cracking the 25th spot earlier this week.

Sorsby Sliding

Sorsby has played some of his worst career football over the past few weeks. Saturday marked his first multi-interception game of the season against one of the best secondaries in the country.

AZ was top 10 in the country with 12 interceptions entering the day and added two more while playing elite man coverage for much of the afternoon. Sorsby's offense got outgained by 150-plus yards after their 14-point first quarter.

At one point in the contest, Sorsby went nearly 20 game minutes without completing a pass. He's been mostly great this season, but has struggled against the better pass defenses Cincinnati's faced. His ESPN QBR has cratered to the low 40s in losses, something UC's offense hasn't overcome once. He had gone over a month without a turnover-worthy play, but committed multiple today and wasn't sharp enough to get the victory.

Defense Crumbles After Halftime

The Bearcats' defense played lights-out football for much of the game, and dialed up the heat on an opposing quarterback for the first time in a long time. Unfortunately most of that was contained to the first half.

Mikah Coleman (eight tackles, 2.5 TFLs, one sack) and the rest of the defensive front sacked Arizona's Noah Fifita (23-31 for 294 yards and one score) three times and kept the AZ passing attack off rhythm for much of the afternoon, until the second half when the veteran passer hunted most of his whopping 10 completions of 15-plus yards.

Matthew McDoom got picked on all day, and UC's coverage only held up for the first 30 minutes overall.

The veteran cornerback has not lived up to expectations in the big moments for Cincinnati this season. His two best games this season have come against the two worst passing attacks Cincinnati's played (Northwestern State and OK State).

Cincinnati does not have a stable option at cornerback right now, and Arizona took full advantage of that on Saturday after some adjustments from their opening game plan.

Tawee Towering

The Bearcats leaned on Walker early in this game as he amassed over 100 yards in the first quarter on multiple gains of 35-plus yards. He averaged 9.9 yards per carry and quizically only ran 12 times.

Cincinnati's offense had major issues through the air, but accessed some nice rushing lanes against the weaker part of the Arizona brick wall. Cincinnati ran for over 150 yards in the first half, and it was the top reason they held a lead entering the break. They had just 40 yards after halftime.

UC didn't have Evan Pryor for a second consecutive game, but it didn't do much to hurt the attack. Walker got spelled plenty of times by freshman running back Zion Johnson (seven carries for 42 yards and one score), who flashed his young skills as a potential future star in the Cincinnati backfield.

Cincinnati knew it had to lean on the rushing attack to win this game, and Walker rumbled along early to help that cause. Early wasn't enough though as Cincinnati awaits a kickoff time for next week's final home matchup this season against BYU.

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