Utah football: Utes looking for Pac-12 road breakthrough

TUCSON, Ariz. — Road success isn't foreign to the Utah Utes this season. They fared well in non-conference victories over BYU (54-10) and Pittsburgh (26-14). Pac-12 play, however, has been a different story.

Utah is 0-2 in conference contests away from Salt Lake City. The setbacks include a spirited 23-14 loss to USC on Sept. 10 and a 34-10 blowout against California in San Francisco two weeks ago.

The latter, said Utah coach Kyle Whittingham, was his team's "poorest performance" of the season.

The Utes, however, bounced back to win their first Pac-12 game — defeating Oregon State 27-8 last week at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Now comes another historical hurdle.

"We've had tough opponents. But you know you need to win on the road and that's probably the next step for us — to win a Pac-12 game on the road," Whittingham said. "In our evolution in this conference that would be a logical next step in the process."

Prevailing away from home, he added, isn't a mental block or anything like that. It's just circumstances.

And speaking of such, there's quite a bit riding on today's game at Arizona Stadium. Both the Utes (4-4, 1-4) and Wildcats (2-6, 1-5) are in dire need of a victory, especially in terms of achieving bowl eligibility.

Utah has some wiggle room, but Arizona doesn't. The Wildcats are one loss away from a guaranteed losing season and no chance of going bowling.

The Utes, meanwhile, need two more wins in a season-ending schedule that includes home games against UCLA (Nov. 12) and Colorado (Nov. 25), as well as road dates at Arizona and Washington State (Nov. 19).

"We love playing at home. We love playing in front of this crowd, great people here in Utah," said quarterback Jon Hays. "But we've got to handle our business on the road. So we're just excited to get an opportunity to do that."

Like Whittingham, Hays doesn't have a solid explanation for Utah's lack of Pac-12 success on the road.

"It's all football really. It's all a football game," he said. "You can win or lose any Saturday."

To succeed this time around, the Utes have to deal with a couple of situations. They'll need to keep Arizona quarterback Nick Foles and targets like all-conference wide receiver Juron Criner in check.