By Anthony Gimino
FOXSportsArizona.com
TUCSON -- Arizona safety Joseph Perkins is hopeful but perhaps delirious.
"I'm still thinking Rose Bowl," he said. "Stranger things have happened, right?"
Uh, well ...
Sure. If you wanted to carry it out to the extreme, you could devise a scenario in which Oregon loses to Cal or Oregon State while Arizona runs the table -- including winning at Oregon -- and Stanford loses once more.
That would create at least a three-way tie for first place in the Pac-10, and if all that happens, we'll worry about the tiebreakers then.
Yeah, stranger things have happened. Just not very many.
The Rose Bowl has been the golden ring Arizona has been chasing all season ... but it's time for the Wildcats to move beyond that, to recalibrate their goals.
There is still much to play for in the final three regular-season games.
Like the direction of the program.
Football is a week-to-week business, and perception can flip faster than an Oregon touchdown drive. Last week at this time, Arizona was knocking on the door of greatness. Now, the Wildcats are staring at a three-game losing streak if they don't beat visiting USC this week.
Let the grumbling begin.
Arizona was, to use a presidential word, "shellacked" last week at Stanford, 42-17. The next game is at top-ranked Oregon. You can see that the Wildcats need to beat the Trojans in order to restore sanity, to make the Stanford game an aberration rather than something that turns into a troubling trend.
"We're still a good football team. We're still a top-20 team," said coach Mike Stoops, whose team is 18th in the BCS standings.
"There are a lot of possibilities out there. One game is not going to make or break us either way. We play a great program, a great, traditional team this week, and I think that's good. I think that motivates our players. We know what USC has to offer and what a game like this means.
"Those are things that you try to talk about -- that we are still good, we've done a lot of good things. There are a lot of people who wish they were in our spot right now, I promise you that."
While Arizona will go another season without the league's biggest prize -- as everyone knows, the program is 0-for-the-Rose Bowl in its Pac-10 years -- the Wildcats are aiming to show that the arrow is still pointing up in Stoops' seventh season.
Assuming a loss at Oregon, a strong finish for Arizona would mean a second consecutive victory over USC, a third straight win over Arizona State and no worse than a repeat appearance in the Holiday Bowl.
If that's not a good season for Arizona, what is?
In the early years after Stoops took over for John Mackovic following the 2003 season, Arizona was playing just to be competitive. Then the Wildcats were playing to learn how to win, then to have a winning season and get to a minor bowl, then to challenge for the Pac-10 title, then to win it.
At the beginning of the season, Arizona's window of opportunity for that last goal seemed to be wide open due to USC's postseason ineligibility, Oregon's uncertainty at quarterback and no other apparent dominant program in the league.
As luck would have it for Arizona, the Ducks end up being good enough to earn the first No. 1 ranking in their history, while Stanford has its best team in four decades.
"I think it is great for the program to be focused on the Rose Bowl," said junior quarterback Nick Foles. "That is something that has been our goal. I think the real key for us is we need to focus on every game as the Rose Bowl. Every game should be that big."
Arizona has no need to apologize for the raised expectations ... provided it finishes well.
The 2008 season (7-5 regular season, 5-4 Pac-10, Las Vegas Bowl) was the program's best since 1998.
The 2009 season (8-4 regular season, 6-3 Pac-10, Holiday Bowl) was even better.
Now, the 2010 season can be even better still. Arizona can end at 9-3 overall and 6-3 in the league if it just holds serve at home against USC and ASU.
At some point, you can no longer keep improving on the previous season, but Stoops wants to delay the rollercoaster as long as he can.
"Each of those seven wins were hard-fought; don't throw those things out the window," Stoops said of his team's record to this point. "We'll continue to fight our way through the season."
But, let's face it, it could go either way.
Arizona isn't good enough to survive against a very good team when it plays as sloppily as it did against Stanford, especially failing in critical situations on third down and in the red zone.
Injuries are beginning to pile up, too.
