Arizona routs winless Huskies

TUCSON -- The Arizona Wildcats vowed not to overlook woeful Washington, and they didn’t.

Rob Gronkowski matched a school record with three touchdown catches, Nic Grigsby ran for 113 yards and the Wildcats routed the Huskies, 48-14, Saturday night.

Willie Tuitama completed 17 of 21 passes for 193 yards and threw three touchdown passes for the Wildcats (4-1 overall and 2-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference), who are looking to end the Pac-10’s longest active bowl drought at nine years.

“Overall, I’m excited about everything we did,” Arizona Coach Mike Stoops said. “We played a complete game on offense, defense and special teams.”

Arizona learned from a bitter experience in 2006, when the Huskies, bound for ninth place in the Pac-10, came to Tucson and handed the Wildcats a 21-10 loss. That defeat ended up costing Arizona a bowl bid.

While the Wildcats are basking in their newfound success, the Huskies (0-5, 0-3) are looking for answers. The result will do little to quiet speculation over the future of Washington Coach Tyrone Willingham, who fell to 11-30 in three-plus seasons at the helm.

“We can do a lot of things better,” Willingham said. “We obviously had a very poor showing here.”

Quarterback Ronnie Fouch, a redshirt freshman who made his first college start, said the Huskies are “not going to give up on our coach. We all came here for him, and we’re going to keep fighting and battling. No matter what it takes, we’re not going to give up this season.”

On a breezy night in the desert, Arizona wasted little time putting away the woeful Huskies. Arizona took a 10-0 lead midway through the first quarter when Gronkowski caught a screen pass and raced 37 yards for a touchdown.

Grigsby added a four-yard run to give Arizona a 17-0 lead after one quarter.