Arizona baseball had won five of its last seven games, which included three road wins, entering Friday evening’s matchup with Kansas State.
Arizona
UCF opponent previews: Arizona enters Big 12 armed with Noah Fifita, Tetairoa McMillan
- Nickname: Wildcats
- Location: Tucson, Ariz.
- Enrollment: 51,134
- Home field: Arizona Stadium (Capacity: 50,782)
- Conference: Big 12
- 2023 record: 10-3, 7-2 Pac-12
- All-time series record vs. UCF: First meeting
Editor’s note: This is the ninth installment in a 12-part series highlighting UCF’s 2024 football opponents.
UCF grounded Doak Walker Award winner Ollie Gordon last year to keep its Space Game record perfect. To do so again, the Citronauts will need to shut down one the nation’s premier passing combinations.
Big 12 newcomer Arizona, which begins the year ranked No. 21 in the US LBM Coaches Poll, visits the Bounce House for the first time on Nov. 2 — right in the heart of a crucial conference stretch for UCF. The Wildcats earned three first-place votes in the league’s preseason media poll, settling for fifth behind Utah, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Last season, Arizona posted double digits in the win column for the first time since 2014, closing with seven straight victories including five against ranked opponents. It punctuated a resurgent campaign with an Alamo Bowl triumph over Oklahoma, which exited the Big 12 officially in July to join the SEC.
For context, the Wildcats began the decade with just one win in their first 17 games.
UCF, meanwhile, is not only undefeated in its seven Space Game showdowns but has done so in dominant fashion. Its all-time margin of victory is 349-147, an average of 28.9 points per game.
Brent Brennan takes over for Jedd Fisch, hires Dino Babers as OC
Fisch completed a gigantic turnaround, a nine-win improvement in the space of two seasons. However, the former Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator bolted for Washington when Kalen DeBoer was named Nick Saban’s successor at Alabama.
Arizona filled its vacancy with Brent Brennan, who spent the previous seven seasons at San Jose State. The Spartans have gone bowling six times since 2000, and three of those instances came during Brennan’s regime.
Brennan, 51, played five seasons at UCLA as a wide receiver and lettered for the Bruins during their 1993 Rose Bowl run. He worked as a Division I assistant for 16 years before taking the head job at San Jose State, where he posted a 34-48 overall record.
Upon taking the job, Brennan promoted Duane Akina to defensive coordinator and hired Dino Babers as the offensive coordinator. Babers, an Arizona assistant from 1995-2000, lasted eight years as the head coach at Syracuse. He compiled a 41-55 record with two bowl trips.
Noah Fifita, Tetairoa McMillan stay loyal to Arizona amid coaching change
Top Offensive Returners: OL Josh Baker, QB Noah Fifita, WR Montana Lemonious-Craig, OL Leif Magnuson, WR Tetairoa McMillan, OL Wendell Moe Jr., OL Raymond Pulido, OL Jonah Savaiinaea
Top Defensive Returners: DB Tacario Davis, LB Justin Flowe, DB Dalton Johnson, DB Gunner Maldonado, LB Jacob Manu, DB Genesis Smith, DB Treydan Stukes, DL Ta’ita’i Uiagalelei
Once Fisch departed Tucson, it could well have been open season on the Arizona roster. A fair number of Wildcats followed their coach to the Pacific Northwest (more on that in a bit). But, all things considered, the team’s most important players shockingly stayed put.
That includes the über-talented quarterback/wide receiver pairing of Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan. The duo — high school teammates at Servite in Anaheim, California — announced they had “unfinished business” in Tucson during a media timeout of the Wildcats’ men’s basketball game against UCLA on Jan. 20.
Fifita sported the fifth-best completion percentage in the Football Bowl Subdivision last year (72.4%), throwing for 2,869 yards with 25 touchdowns and six picks. McMillan ranked fifth in the nation with 1,402 receiving yards, scoring on 10 of his 90 receptions.
McMillan checks in at No. 5 on Pro Football Focus’ big board for 2025 NFL draft prospects, and he’s not the lone returning Wildcat gaining first-round traction. Cornerback Tacario Davis (No. 32), at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, led the Pac-12 with 15 pass breakups. Offensive lineman Jonah Savaiinaea posted the team’s second-highest blocking grade, per PFF’s metrics, and allowed just two sacks.
All-Pac-12 linebacker Jacob Manu paced the conference with 116 tackles, surpassing double digits on five occasions. He added 9½ tackles for loss, 6½ sacks, 13 quarterback hurries, two pass breakups and an interception. Arizona has five of its top six tacklers back, including starting safeties Dalton Johnson and Gunner Maldonado.
Arizona loses D-linemen, adds talented New Mexico running back
Transfer Portal Additions: DL Jarra Anderson (Memphis), RB Quali Conley (San Jose State), RB Jacory Croskey-Merritt (New Mexico), QB Adam Damante (Northern Arizona), DL Kevon Darton (Syracuse), OL Alexander Doost (Northwestern), DB Demetrius Freeney (Miami), QB Anthony Garcia (San Jose State), DB Owen Goss (Colgate), DB Marquis Groves-Killebrew (Louisville), DL Lance Keneley (Stanford), EDGE Chase Kennedy (Utah), DB Jack Luttrell (Tennessee), DL Chubba Ma’ae (UC Davis), OL Shancco Matautia (Arizona State), WR Reymello Murphy (Old Dominion), TE Sam Olson (San Jose State), RB Kedrick Reescano (Ole Miss), OL Jonah Rodriguez (San Diego State), DB Jordan Shaw (Indiana), EDGE Tre Smith (San Jose State), OL Ryan Stewart (San Jose State), DL Stanley Ta’ufo’ou (USC), OL Michael Wooten (Oregon)
Transfer Portal Losses: LB Ammon Allen (Northern Arizona), OL Joe Borjon (San Diego State), RB Jonah Coleman (Washington), EDGE Russell Davis II (Washington), QB Jayden de Laura, WR Deric English, WR Kevin Green Jr. (Washington), WR Audric Harris (Washington), EDGE Jason Harris (Marshall), LS Kameron Hawkins (Colorado), LB Daniel Heimuli (Georgia State), DL Jacob Rich Kongaika (Arizona State), RB Adam Mohammed (Washington), DB Kanyon Moses (Northern Arizona), DL Bill Norton (Texas), OL Anthony Patt (Old Dominion), EDGE Orin Patu (Bethune-Cookman), DB Ephesians Prysock (Washington), RB Stevie Rocker Jr. (Montana), DB Cruz Rushing (Oregon), DL Tiaoalii Savea (Texas), DB Isaiah Taylor (Miami), DL Isaiah Ward (Washington), DB DJ Warnell (Indiana), RB Jordan Washington (Washington), OL Michael Watkins (Washington), QB Demond Williams Jr. (Washington), DB Charles Yates Jr. (Old Dominion)
While the narrative surrounding the Wildcats’ offseason has, justifiably, focused on the players who stayed, it bears mentioning that they suffered a handful of key departures as well.
Ephesians Prysock partnered with Davis to give Arizona one of the best cornerback tandems in college football last year, but he chose to head to Washington, as did leading rusher Jonah Coleman (871 yards, five TDs) and pass rusher Isaiah Ward (four sacks), among others. The defensive line was gutted between the portal and the draft, with interior linemen Bill Norton and Tiaoalii Savea following former coordinator Johnny Nansen to Texas.
Brennan brought reinforcements along from San Jose State, filling a big hole on the edge with All-Mountain West defensive end Tre Smith (66 tackles, 9½ TFLs, 6½ sacks). Quali Conley rushed for 842 yards and nine touchdowns, and tight end Sam Olson set career highs with 310 receiving yards and three TDs.
Arizona added a 1,000-yard rusher from the MWC in New Mexico’s Jacory Croskey-Merritt, who scored 17 touchdowns and outgained Damien Martinez, Quinshon Judkins and Jonathon Brooks on the ground. Chubba Ma’ae, Kevon Darton and Jarra Anderson will each seek to make an impact in the middle of the Wildcat defense.
Could any freshmen make an impact for Arizona?
Top Incoming Freshmen: LB Stacy Bey (Fontana, Calif.), LB Jabari Mann (San Mateo, Calif.), EDGE Eduwa Okundaye (Katy, Texas), WR Brandon Phelps (Gilbert, Ariz.), TE Dylan Tapley (Scottsdale, Ariz.)
The effects of Fisch’s exit might most be felt on the recruiting front, at least in terms of the Wildcats’ 2024 haul.
Four signees hit the transfer portal and followed their coach to Washington, including Arizona’s top two consensus recruits — quarterback Demond Williams Jr. (Chandler, Ariz.) and running back Jordan Washington (Long Beach, Calif.). Williams will be groomed behind Mississippi State transfer Will Rogers as the Huskies’ QB of the future.
In-state tight end Dylan Tapley is the highest-rated player remaining in Arizona’s freshman class. He caught 41 passes for 604 yards and nine touchdowns for Scottsdale’s Desert Mountain.
Transfers lifted Arizona to 48th in 247Sports’ overall team recruiting rankings, but it finished 84th in terms of its high school signees (15th of the Big 12’s 16 programs).
Due to significant injuries to the CB position last year which includes a shoulder surgery for Terrion Arnold, the Lions CB position scored a 6/10 need on my Lions Defensive Draft Need Rankings. Thus, an early-round selection of a young, healthy prospect like Keith Abney would not come as a surprise. He enters the draft with very low medical concern level.
Here is the excerpt from my medical report on Keith Abney:
(Ages in parentheses are at start of 2026 season and are factored into the concern level. Injury info and ages based on available public information are unverified and subject to update. Games played data courtesy of sports-reference.com.)
Keith Abney, CB (21) – Arizona State
Projected round 2-3. #43 on Jeff Risdon board Feb 19.
Concern level 0/10
There is an isolated report of a hand injury but no corroborating information. Even if the hand injury is true, that’s of minimal to no long-term concern.
His availability in his final two seasons has been perfect. Overall, Abney appears to be medically clean and is at an excellent age.
He finished college with 6 INT and 21 PBU.
For more Lions coverage, follow us on X, @TheLionsWire, and give our Facebook page a like. Follow Jimmy on X, @JimmyLiaoMD
In the first game of the series, Arizona (14-23, 5-11 Big 12) battled in a low-scoring affair but fell short in a 2-1 loss to Kansas State (24-12, 8-8 Big 12). The Wildcats from Tucson held the Wildcats from Manhattan at bay for a good majority of the night.
Given that Kansas State leads the Big 12 in conference play in batting, on-base percentage, and slugging, Arizona had a rather good performance, but it was not enough.
Owen Kramkowski pitched seven scoreless innings before allowing the first Kansas State run in the top of the eight. He finished with six strikeouts and kept the high octane Wildcats at bay.
“I thought the defense played well behind him too,” said head coach Chip Hale. “There’s a lot of ground balls, and we made plays where we were positioned in good places, and he was pitching in the eighth inning. That’s unbelievable.”
Garrett Hicks (3-1) came in to try and stop the bleeding for the Wildcats and did so by not allowing Kansas State to take the lead in the eighth. It was in the ninth when the lead was surrendered.
It took until the sixth inning but the first run was scored by Arizona. Andrew Cain singled to left field and after Maddox Mihalakis flew out, it was Beau Sylvester bringing Cain home with a triple through right center field.
Sylvester extended his hitting streak to eight games and it proved to be not enough to get Arizona to the finish line.
Kansas State tied the game at the top of the eight when back to back singles got runners on at first and third. Then a passed ball allowed the third base runner to come home.
Arizona had a chance to retake the lead in the bottom of the ninth after Cain singled to deep right field. With Sylvester back at the plate, it seemed like it was a perfect set up.
A wild pitch nearly got past Kansas State and Cain tried to take advantage of it and steal home. However, Kansas State was able to corral the pitch and get Cain out at home.
AJ Evasco started the ninth inning with a double for Kansas State and back to back fly outs eventually got him home to give Kansas State the lead and the win.
With eight players being left on base, Arizona will need to bring those runners in more often than not if they want to tie the series Saturday afternoon.
As a young team, the Wildcats have had to walk a very tight line between disappointment and dejection and will need to continue handling these losses with grace if it wants to turn a corner.
“It’s the way it goes, it’s baseball,” said Hale. “If we don’t handle it, we will come out tomorrow and won’t be ready to go, so hopefully they handle it.”
Over the last 75 years, hair shows have become a staple of Black culture in the U.S. These events celebrate textured hair through the creative, and often sculptural, styling of centuries-old techniques like braiding and barbering.
The biggest hair shows in the country take place in cities with a much larger Black population than Phoenix — like Bronner Bros. in Atlanta, which can bring in around 30,000 people semi-annually.
But as the Black community here grows and newer Arizona residents bring the culture with them, hair shows have started to pop up in town.
The fourth annual Arizona Fantasy Expo Hair Show will return Sunday in Phoenix.
Show producer Athena Ankrah attended the third annual Fantasy Expo Hair Show in Phoenix last April, and shares what she saw.
About 200 people crowd La Princesa event hall in north Phoenix on a Sunday evening in 2025. Music blasts from speakers on either side of a stage and flows into the dance floor below. There are people of all ages here. Most attendees are dressed in white, to match the all-white ball theme, but there’s no shortage of color atop models’ heads.
Lauren Jackson, 20, just graduated from a barber school in Phoenix.
We’re watching a competition between two barbers — who can shave the cleanest tapered fade the fastest — when she tells me her plans for the event she’s competing in: the loc battle.
“So I made a basketball hoop out of locs,” Jackson said.
Hair shows give local hair stylists, barbers and braiders the chance to show off their creative talents through showcases and competitions.
Some stylists had been working on their entries for more than a year leading up to the Fantasy Hair Expo. But that wasn’t the case for Jackson. The event’s organizers promoted the show at Jackson’s barber school shortly before that day.
“I’m like, OK, bet! … Mind you, this was a week before the hair show,” Jackson said.
Hair shows are a Black American tradition dating back about 75 years. The creative hair styling can be so eccentric, it’s almost performance art.
Because it’s not just the hair style on display. It’s a message conveyed through clothes, and sometimes choreography. And a chance to delight in hair textures and styles that have historically been a target of discrimination.
“A lot of us are like really creative and they’re styles that you just can’t do on a daily basis. So the hair show just kind of gives you the platform to just have fun with it, you know, just be really artistic,” Aisha Wesley said.
Wesley is a cosmetologist who organized the event with fellow cosmetologist and friend LaTricia Williams.
“I definitely think that the hair show is empowering to the community because it’s like, if nobody else accepts us, we accept us, right,” Wesley said. “I’ve had clients before that have had to come back and get their hair redone because their job was like, ‘you can’t wear that.’ You know? the hair show just kind of gives that freedom …”
“I can wear whatever I wanna wear,” Williams said.
That freedom and ingenuity was on display at the show.
Now, seeing 40 inches of dollar bills sewn into the bottom of a pixie haircut would have been enough.
But the same stylist, Cherie Nelson of Majestik Handzz Beauty Demand in Mesa, put together a whole crew of models with ’90s-inspired streetwear and exuberant hair to match.
Nelson put one model in vivid bubblegum pink afro puffs, and another with huge headphones over her ears — made entirely of braids.
And for the finale: A young woman crawls on stage, covered in wigs. She’s wearing crimped wigs from head to toe. Underneath, the leather catsuit, knee-high boots and afro wreath around her face gives her a sort of Janet Jackson lioness look.
She stalks downstage, rises to her feet and pulls the lion’s mane onto her shoulders to reveal bantu knots: sleek sectioned hair twisted into knots, a protective style dating back to Zulu women in South Africa.
The crowd is loving it.
“She went from hoodie, to a lion’s mane, to a jacket, to Catwoman – how do you do that?” the host said.
Finally, it’s time for Lauren Jackson’s event — the loc battle.
It’s all about who can craft the most creative and colorful style out of locs and accessories, with extra points for technique and details.
For the uninitiated, locs aren’t always dreadlocks. The term often refers to a more structured twist or coiling of hair rather than the Rastafari-style organic loc-ing of hair.
Loc specialists — also called locticians — can build their styles ahead of time, but on competition day they only have 30 minutes to attach everything to their model’s head and make any finishing touches.
“Y’all ready? Get set! Go!” the host exclaimed.
Anna Holly drove from San Francisco the night before to compete with her mom as her hair model.
“It was about 12 hours. But it wasn’t bad,” Holly said while laughing.
Despite the time constraint, Jackson’s entry is not insignificant.
She super-glued, painted and shaped synthetic hair onto a basketball hoop with about a foot tall backboard.
“So I bought a box of those, the sandwich bags, and I’m like, ‘well, I can use this.’ At Dollar Tree, they also had a hoop already made. So I basically wrapped the whole thing with locs,” Jackson said. “Then I took some orange loc hair and I wrapped that with the rim. And then I took some silver grayish lock hair as well for the, the net to the basketball hoop.”
“It was so hard, I’m not gonna lie. I stayed up like day and night trying to figure it out between school,” Jackson said.
And it’s functional, too — she brought a teeny tiny basketball to prove it.
“Now, if Steph Curry come out of there and shoot a 3? You won!” the host said.
Another loctician, Elisha Davis, has built a sea goddess look that’s essentially a huge halo of locs sticking straight up. It’s woven with seashells. The stylist and her model have matching glittery siren makeup. The design is minimal enough that you can really see the details.
“She sells seashells by the seashore. … Aphrodite ain’t playin’!” the host said.
And Holly is installing a replica of a famous landmark on her mother’s head.
“Is that traffic on her head, y’all? … It’s the Golden Gate Bridge!” the host said to cheers from the crowd.
Yes, the Golden Gate Bridge, made entirely of hair.
“I’m like, dang, I didn’t even know that was possible, y’all! And she had cars on the bridge!” Jackson said.
Master loctitian and cosmetologist Jai Davis is this event’s judge.
“I’m looking for detail, creativity. … I like integrity more than flash. I like skill more than flash,” Davis said.
It was a tight race. But a winner and runner-up are announced.
“This one was super, super hard, we had to go all the way down to details. We had to look at edges and fresh retwists because the creativity in this competition was so cold,” Davis said. “So, because we had to go down to detail and crispy edges. … We gon’ give it to the Golden [Gate] Bridge!”
So Jackson’s basketball hoop didn’t win.
But despite that, she said, “it was so worth it. If I can go back, I would do it all over again.”
And next time, she’ll be ready.
“Oh my God, I’m gonna do so much more next year. Oh my goodness, I can not wait for next year. ‘Cause I’m gonna do so much more,” Jackson said.
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