Turnovers, bowl loss can't blight real progress made on way to where Sooners are going
Here’s the thing.
Arizona deserved it.
Live with it. It did.
The Wildcats beat the Sooners 38-24 in San Antonio Thursday night, claiming their seventh straight victory and their fifth over that span against a ranked team.
If not well played by both sides — you saw Oklahoma’s turnovers and Arizona’s running game, right? — it was at least an exciting Alamo Bowl inside the Alamodome, full of twists and turns and Sooner sacks and giveaways.
So many giveaways.
It probably would have been different had Dillon Gabriel stuck around for one more go-round, but he didn’t and the game now over and romantic rhapsodies about what bowl games once meant and should still aside, yes, Jackson Arnold ought to be a better quarterback next season than he would have been had he not shouldered the load in this game, the one with all the turnovers.
Six from the Sooners alone, though it might have felt like 13.
Maybe Arizona doesn’t beat OU again.
The Wildcats will never admit it, but maybe they don’t.
Play the game five more times and maybe the Sooners win every one, if for no other reason than the fact Drake Stoops dropped Arnold’s second pass, a pass he’s bound to catch in the next five most probable alternate realities. And if Stoops catches that pass, the third pass Arnold threw would not have been intercepted by Genesis Smith because he never would have thrown it, and Arizona would never have scored on its very next snap, a 35-yard toss from Noah Fifta to Jacob Cowing, putting it on top 10-0 less than 5 minutes into it.
Maybe it’s just that simple.
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