Arizona’s offense came to the line of scrimmage as the clock ticked toward the two-minute timeout.

The Wildcats were facing a make-or-break play: fourth-and-2 from their own 33. Convert and a potential game-winning drive continues. Don’t, and Utah leaves Tucson with a win.

The Utes showed blitz, with a defensive lineman coming right to the edge of the neutral zone. The ball was snapped, and Arizona QB Noah Fifita’s pass was knocked away.

Ball game. Utah 40, Arizona 39. The Utes remained undefeated.

But here’s the thing: Arizona never intended to run a play.

“We’re trying to draw them offside,” Arizona coach Brent Brennan said.

The plan was simple: Go up to the line and have quarterback Noah Fifita yell and move his hands to try to get the Utes to jump for a free first down. If Utah didn’t jump? Oh well, let the clock run to the two-minute break and come out with the actual play.

But when Arizona center Zach Henning saw the Utes move, he snapped the ball.

“In that situation right there, that’s my fault,” Brennan said. “I never should have put Zach in that position. I never should have put him in that position.”

“We had dummy cadence, so we’re trying to get them to jump offside,” he continued. “They moved. They didn’t come far enough into the neutral zone. He snapped it, and we didn’t have a good answer. And so that’s my fault.”

Fifita only wanted to point a finger at one person: himself.

“I don’t think it’s my place to kind of speak on that,” he said when asked about the play. “I’ll let kind of the coaches speak on it, but at the end of the day, the ball is in my hands with the play to be made, and I didn’t make it, so I take the blame for that play.”

That play — and the drive that didn’t end with Arizona winning the game — stuck with Fifita.

“Defense gave us the ball back with over two minutes to be able to go get a field goal,” Fifita said. “We didn’t do it, so that’s the part that kind of hurts.”