Welcome to the Big 12, Arizona! Your first assignment: hit the road to take on the preseason favorite, which also happens to be a team you often struggled to beat while in the Pac-12.

The Wildcats (2-1) begin their first season in the Big 12 with a visit to 10th-ranked Utah, where they haven’t won since 2014. Arizona beat the Utes (4-0, 1-0) last season in Tucson but have dropped three straight in Salt Lake City.

How will Arizona do in its first Big 12 game? Our staff makes its predictions.

Kim Doss — Utah wins 35-21

Like Arizona’s game against Kansas State, this one looked like a loss coming into the season. Also like the last game, nothing has happened since the season started to make that early prediction seem unlikely.

Utah is giving up about 20 points per game to its brethren in the Big 12. Arizona is averaging 30 this season against lesser competition. The 20-point neighborhood seems far more likely for the Wildcats in this one.

The Utes have averaged 33 points per game, about seven more than Arizona has allowed. With the Wildcats’ defensive struggles, Utah should be able to get their average.

Ezra Amacher — Utah wins 38-21

The optimist in me wants to say that Arizona spent its bye week fixing its woes on offense and will come out Saturday with a great game plan to against Utah’s vaunted defense. The realist in me knows that whatever progress Arizona may have made on the offensive side of the ball won’t translate in any real way. It’s important that Arizona shows some level of competitiveness and not a repeat of what we saw against Kansas State. If not, fans are going to turn on the coaching staff in a hurry.

Adam Green — Utah wins 37-24

Going into the season, back when there was great optimism for Arizona, this one was penciled in as a loss. Utah was bringing back an excellent team and figured to have Cam Rising at QB, with the veteran’s 24 seasons of experience proving valuable to the Utes’ cause.

Unfortunately the Wildcats haven’t done much over their first three games to make you think they can go to Utah and win, even if Rising doesn’t actually play. The Utes are incredibly tough in the trenches and will be motivated to return the favor after Arizona beat them up pretty good in Tucson last season. The guess here is the Wildcats will play their best game of the season, lose, but have us feeling better about their chances the rest of the way.

Brandon Combs — Utah wins 45-31

I believe that Arizona will be improved coming off the bye week. That said, it is hard going into Salt Lake City and winning on the road. Utah’s lines on both sides of the ball are stout. If Cam Rising is playing, it’ll be up to the UA d-line to get enough pressure on him. If it’s Isaac Wilson, the defensive line will have to contain. The defense has yet to prove it can do either effectively or consistently. Couple that with we have no idea what the offensive line will do. Still, I do expect to see improve from Arizona, just not enough to overcome the Utes in SLC.

Juan Serrano — Utah wins 38-24

Arizona is facing the second part of their early season test. They failed the first part in their loss to Kansas State. Now heading to Utah, they will be pushed to the brink. The offense needs to find itself again, and the defense needs to show that they can handle the physicality that Utah is going to bring. Noah Fifita took all the blame this week for the offensive struggles. I believe the offense is not going to stay in this rut that they’re in and is going to be in sync this week.

However, Utah is an established program. They are a team that performs well at home. A black-out at Rice-Eccles Stadium and a lot of physicality from the Utes will be too much for Arizona to handle. Utah gets revenge from last season.

Devin Homer — Utah wins 31-24

There could be some bad blood after last seasons Arizona win over Utah, 42-18. UA threw a deep pass down the sideline and added a garbage time touchdown, which I’m sure Utah will remember. Arizona will be looking to get back on track after its last loss to Kansas Sate, luckily for UA it didn’t count for a conference game and its conference record is a clean slate.

Utah at home will be tough to beat and you add on UA hasn’t shown enough throughout the first three games to give me confidence that an upset will be possible.

Brian J. Pedersen — Utah wins 30-16

This is both the best and worst time for Arizona to be playing the toughest opponent on the 2024 schedule. It’s great because the Wildcats are coming off a bye, and thus were able to presumably get healthy while also address the many issues that have popped up over the first three games. But it’s bad because this was a likely loss going into the season, even before cracks started appearing in the dam. It may be hard for the UA to show progress while also losing, but the No. 1 goal in this game should be to keep it competitive and not look like a team that hasn’t learned from its mistakes.