No Offense, but . . . : Arizona Is 7-0 and Ranked No. 7 in the Nation, but Wildcats Are Taking the Heat Because Defense Has Been the Entire Show

Lute Olson is getting off easy in Tucson.

With the opening of practice only days away, Arizona’s basketball coach would generally be getting an earful from callers to KTUC from 6 to 8 p.m. nightly, debating the Wildcats’ prospects, the naysayers drowning out the optimists with reminders of the team’s annual nose-dive in the NCAA tournament.

But this year, there is basketball silence.

The critics have a new target, half of a football team that is 7-0 and ranked No. 7 in the nation. The Arizona offense is, well, offensive, according to the callers in what has become a nightly litany to which Coach Dick Tomey’s responses have become, well, defensive.

“You need to look at the USC film,” he responds.

Tomey’s is a team capable of winning a game strictly with a defense that is on target for an NCAA record for stinginess.

In a rare show of offense, the Wildcats beat USC, 38-7, with Dan White throwing three touchdown passes.

The Wildcats didn’t score a touchdown against Washington State, got no offensive touchdowns against Illinois and have managed four victories by three or fewer points.

“Arizona’s offense never beats them,” says Coach Terry Donahue, whose UCLA team plays the Wildcats Saturday night at the Rose Bowl. “There are certain people who go to a football game that don’t enjoy that, but the reality of it is the bottom line--wins and losses.”

Arizona has plenty of wins. But it also has the bottom-ranked offense in the Pacific 10, and the critics have rewarded that with frequent boos when the top-ranked Wildcat defense comes off the field.

So much more was expected after Arizona went 4-7 in 1991 with an option offense. Tomey announced that the pass would become an integral part of the future, and issued a call for able-bodied, strong-armed quarterbacks to report to Tucson.

White, who had passed for 3,100 yards in his senior season at San Diego Point Loma High--half of those to UCLA’s J.J. Stokes--was languishing in obscurity at Penn State when he heard the call.

Chafing at the Nittany Lions’ conservative offense and his potential role in it, he brightened at the prospect of playing in an aerial circus and had had enough snow for a lifetime. So White transferred, sat out a season and completed 11 of 12 passes for 140 yards in a scrimmage last spring.

Finally, a drop-back passer to lead the Wildcats out of an offensive desert.

“The expectations were high as to the offense and the passing game,” White said. “My expectations were high. Well, you can’t please everybody.”

In a 24-6 victory over Texas El Paso, the offense was stagnant. White threw two interceptions, one from the Miner 18. But there was enough running to win and the defense held UTEP to two field goals and threw the Miners for minus-eight yards in 14 possessions.

Still, it was early and White was playing in his first game since 1989, his senior season at Point Loma.

Pacific was vanquished, but only by 16-13 and with 277 yards rushing. The rumblings began. In a 16-14 victory at Illinois, the points were scored on fumbles returned 76 and 46 yards for touchdowns after sacks by Rob Waldrop.

A 33-0 victory over Oregon State and the thrashing of USC quieted things, and Stanford was beaten on a last-play field goal, 27-24, in what, for Arizona, was a shootout.

Then came the Washington State game and a 9-6 victory.

“I don’t think we played very well,” Tomey admits. “But I think they had something to do with that. When you don’t do well against a team like Washington State, I think you have to give them credit, rather than think you don’t have a good offense.”

Said Arizona defensive end Tedy Bruschi, commenting on his team’s offense after the Washington State game: “Sometimes, they look like the best in the nation; sometimes they look like the worst. I have total confidence in our offense. They’ll come around when they have to.”

Nose guard Waldrop added, “You can’t worry about it. We’ve been through it too many times. Regardless of how they get it done, they get it done.”

Those endorsements are hardly ringing, but the boos are.

White had completed only seven of 26 passes for 144 yards into the fourth quarter against Washington State.

Then he connected on seven in a row for 71 yards, three of the completions in a drive to a 32-yard field goal by Steve McLaughlin, whose foot supplied the game-winner for the second week in a row.

White is the lightning rod of the offense. Arizona had tried the passing game last season, but quarterback George Malauulu didn’t remind anybody of the old Danny White, a quarterback who set records up the road at Arizona State--and later with the Dallas Cowboys--a generation ago. The old and new Whites are not related, either by birth or, at least currently, by demonstrated ability.

The new White offered hope, and it is testimony to his predecessors that his seven touchdown passes are one more than any quarterback has thrown in Tomey’s eight seasons in Tucson.

“I think Danny has grown a lot,” Tomey says. “I probably was as impressed last week with him as I’ve been. . . . He’s still just a sophomore quarterback, still learning every week, but he’s exhibited some toughness and good judgment and he’s a lot better now than he was seven weeks ago.

“I didn’t have any preconceived notions about (White’s play). I knew that he’d struggle . . . but I was optimistic that he could do the job.”

Some of the toughness has been in handling the critics. White has completed 47.8% of 159 passes for 1,007 yards, but the offense still bears the description conservative, a buzzword that bugs Tomey.

“Late in the Washington State game, we called a halfback pass on third and four, trying to score a touchdown,” he says.

Billy Johnson’s pass was intercepted.

“It backfired, sure, and we were intercepted,” Tomey said. “We had to come back and kick a field goal (to win). The conservative approach would have been just to try to position ourselves for a field goal at that point, because we were playing good defense. Generally, we’re just trying to win the game, and we’ll do whatever we need to do to do that. If it takes a conservative approach . . . “

It has, so far.

Donahue, a friend of Tomey from years spent together as assistants at Kansas and UCLA, goes back to the Wildcats’ record. Undefeated is still undefeated.

“I think Arizona’s offense is being overshadowed because Arizona’s defense is performing so well,” he says. “And the other thing is that Arizona does not put its offense on display. They let the offense do what it needs to do to win the game.”

It’s not enough for the Tucson critics, and it’s not enough for the Wildcats.

“We need to find a way to take some of the load off the defense,” White says. “Our base offense is running the ball, a ball-control offense, and it’s pretty conservative. But most successful teams are.”

Winning ugly is still winning. And the criticism is usually louder for pretty teams that lose. Ask Lute Olson about that in March.