Arizona settles for Holiday Bowl
Posted: Sunday December 06, 1998 09:11 PM
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San Diego's newest Canidate: Arizona's Trung Canidate leads the Wildcats to the Holiday Bowl against Nebraska AP |
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The Holiday Bowl turned into the consolation
game for Arizona on Sunday, when the Wildcats accepted a bid to the
December 30 contest against Nebraska in lieu of a trip to the Rose
Bowl, which seemed likely just days before.
No. 5 Arizona lost out on their first Rose Bowl appearance
because of UCLA's 49-45 loss to Miami on Saturday. That took the
Bruins out of the Fiesta Bowl meeting between the top two teams in
the Bowl Championship Series rankings and put them into the Rose
Bowl.
The Wildcats (11-1) instead drew the invitation to the Holiday
Bowl in San Diego as the Pac-10's No. 2 team.
"Obviously all our fans, players and staff are very
disappointed that we didn't get to go to the Rose Bowl because we
felt we were very deserving," Arizona coach Dick Tomey said. "But
we understood that we didn't control our own destiny. If we want
the best things to happen to us, we have to control our own
destiny."
Although they started only five seniors, the Wildcats closed the
regular season with the highest ranking in school history. They
suffered their only loss to UCLA.
"If [the Rose Bowl] wasn't going to happen, we couldn't go to a
better place than San Diego and play in the Holiday Bowl," Tomey
said. "We have so many players from California and so many fans
that want to be able to get there and watch our team play."
The No. 14 Cornhuskers (9-3) of the Big 12 will be making their
30th straight post-season bowl appearance. However, they will be
missing out on a New Year's Day game for the first time since 1980,
when they appeared in the Sun Bowl.
"It's accurate that Arizona is one of the top teams in the
country," Nebraska coach Frank Solich said. "It will be a
tremendous challenge for our team, but we're looking forward to it.
It will be a great game. I know they're tough on both sides of the
ball and special teams."
Holiday Bowl president Weldon Donaldson said game officials
stayed with an early inclination to invite Nebraska rather switch
to No. 4 Kansas State, which fell out of Fiesta Bowl consideration
Saturday with a 36-33 double overtime loss to Texas A&M.
The Holiday Bowl sold 10,000 tickets, he said, in the two weeks
since word was out that the Cornhuskers were a likely participant.
"This is probably the best matchup in our [21-year] history,"
Donaldson said. "That's in terms of the stature of the programs,
fan support and national rankings."
Before the announcement of opponents, the Holiday Bowl was
already assured of record attendance for this year's game. Bowl
officials said they are less than 4,000 tickets short of reaching a
sellout of 70,500 in Qualcomm Stadium.
The record of 61,892 was set in 1987 for the encounter between
Wyoming and Oklahoma State with Heisman Trophy winner Barry
Sanders.
The Cornhuskers and Arizona played to a 14-14 tie in their only
other meeting in 1961, in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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