SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- It's surreal for Boise State quarterback Grant Hedrick to imagine this Fiesta Bowl berth when he recollects the Broncos' fateful late September loss to Air Force.
Hedrick had thrown four interceptions, was benched in the middle of a 28-14 loss and Boise State found itself 3-2 in the first five games since head coach Chris Petersen departed for Washington. The starting quarterback, who was 7-5 since taking over as the full-time quarterback for then-injured senior Joe Southwick in 2013, could hardly imagine himself having the guts to show his face on Boise State campus.
"Luckily, I had all online classes so I didn't have to go through campus," he said. "It was hard. For a few days there after the game, I had to get my mind right for the next week."
Tuesday practice came around. That helped a little bit.
An honest meeting with first-year head coach Bryan Harsin and offensive coordinator Mike Sanford came as well. The message was simple: Hedrick knew he had to do better, and the coaches said something needed to change with him. Otherwise, they would be making a permanent change at quarterback.
"It was a short and sweet meeting," the quarterback remembers.
Hedrick began fixing his own issues first.
"I think I just got the mentality to cut it loose," he said. "That's one of the things that got me better is throwing balls that were contested and not hesitating.
"It was little tiny details I had to clean up: My footwork, seeing the right thing, not forcing stuff."
A game after the loss to Air Force, Hedrick completed 26 of 31 passes for 346 yards, three total touchdowns and one interception in a win over Nevada. Since the Air Force loss, he's thrown 17 touchdowns to four picks as Boise State has won eight games in a row behind Hedrick and running back Jay Ajayi.
Hedrick heads into the bowl game as the NCAA leader by completing 70.9 percent of his passes.
"They do a lot of things with him with his feet," Arizona defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel said of Hedrick. "He does a good job off the play-action. He can get out on the perimeter and hurt you. I think he manages the game, he does a good job getting them into what the coaches want to get them into."
Here are four more tidbits to know about the Boise State program as it prepares to face Arizona on Wednesday.
The first year of the post-Petersen era was something of a season-long journey for the Broncos to find their place.
Hedrick called the rough start a result of complacency. He said the Boise State brand, for all its past success, had led to some entitlement in the locker room.
"When you go somewhere and you're winning a whole lot of games, certain kids may think, 'I'm at a certain school, I'm just going to win,' " said defensive coordinator Marcel Yates. "I don't care if that's Alabama, Boise State, USC, Oregon. I just think it's 18-, 19-, 20-year old kids. I think everybody, at some point, it becomes a time where you figure out why a team is winning."
The players eventually began to understand how past teams had worked to get to this point. And they had the perfect staff to help them learn how those teams made history.
Yates played at Boise State, then was an assistant on the staff from 2003-2011. Then he spent two season at Texas A&M before returning to his alma mater this year.
Harsin, a Boise native, took over the program after spending 2001-10 as a Boise State assistant. He left to become a Texas offensive coordinator and then the head coach of Arkansas State before being hired as Petersen's replacement.
Associate head coach Kent Riddle followed Harsin from Arkansas State and coached at Boise State when Petersen was an offensive coordinator in 2001-05. Offensive coordinator Sanford likewise was familiar with the program. He was a Broncos quarterback from 2000-04 and left a successful Stanford program to join Harsin's staff.
While the coaches don't want their players to rely on the program's past success, they know how the 2007 Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma raised the profile of the program.
"I don't even know what's the word I'm looking for, but you could feel a difference after that game," Yates said. "And probably moreso in recruiting, and people kind of knowing about our brand and seeing that brand and knowing we could play."
Added linebacker Tanner Vallejo: "That first win, I forget what they used to call Boise State, but it put us up with the top names in the country.
"When I got the offer from Boise State, it was like, whoa. I remember showing one of my friends that I got a Boise State offer, and he went crazier than I did."
Sanford isn't taking Arizona linebacker Scooby Wright, the most decorated player on either side, lightly. He loves Wright's football IQ, his ability to react quickly and key on what offenses are doing.
"For him, he might miss a tackle because he's going 100 miles per hour to get to the ball carrier, but he always ends up back in the action," Sanford said. "He retraces, he finds the ball."
But Sanford's coaching days at Stanford make him quite familiar with the other Wildcats. He knows undersized linebacker Tra'Mayne Bondurant can create turnovers seemingly out of thin air, and he also respects the three-man defensive front that includes Reggie Gilbert, Dan Pettinato, Parker Zellers and Sani Fuimaono.
"They eat up double-teams," Sanford said. "They're two-gapping, 3-3-5 stack defense that really free up Scooby, free up the backers."
Yates thinks his Broncos have the speed to contend with a Pac-12 football team like Arizona. He looked to the Broncos' first game of the year, a 35-13 loss to Ole Miss, for a comparison.
"To me that's a game you look at because you're talking about better athletes at those two schools -- Arizona and Ole Miss," Yates said. "But they run it at a whole different tempo. I don't know if we played a team that played that fast."
The score in that loss to the Rebels, who at one point this year were ranked No. 1, isn't indicative of how closely Boise State played the SEC opponent. Ole Miss led 7-6 heading into the fourth quarter before the wheels fell off. Boise State allowed four touchdowns in the final period.
In the first three quarters, however, Yates saw some good things.
"I don't know if we thought we were as good as we were on our side of the ball," Yates said.
Vallejo and senior safety Darian Thompson, who Yates calls the quarterback of the offense, will have their hands full containing outside runs and quarterback zone-read plays. Yates said success will come down to his defense making tackles in space, something the Broncos have emphasized leading into the Fiesta Bowl.
The Broncos head coach had a relatively brief stay coaching the Texas Longhorns from 2011-12, but while he was there became familiar with two of Arizona's offensive players.
Harsin recruited UA's leading receiver, Cayleb Jones, to the Longhorns.
Jones transferred to Arizona after playing for Texas in 2012, and in his first season with the Wildcats he caught 65 balls for 902 yards and nine touchdowns.
"You'd like to take some of those young guys and let them marinate a little bit, that wasn't the case with him. He came right in and played," Harsin said. "I think his maturity level, watching him now, you see what experience does for an athlete like Cayleb.
"I've watched his demeanor, it's gotten better. He's more mature."
Harsin also coached and recruited Arizona backup quarterback Connor Brewer, who attended Chaparral High School in Scottsdale.
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VIDEO: Coaches Rich Rodriguez and Bryan Harsin discuss their teams' preparations for Wednesday's game.
