Last season, Arizona’s running back room was in a good place to start the season. It was a short lived reality once Jacory Croskey-Merritt was held out for eligibility reasons, and then Rayshon Luke shut it down in order to redshirt and go into the transfer portal.
That left Quali Conley and Kedrick Reescano to take most of the carries. Even freshman walk-on fullback Kayden Luke was called into rotation.
This season, running backs coach Alonzo Carter wants the theme to be versatility. Whether that’s in explosiveness, power, agility, Carter wants his squad to be able to do everything.
“Each year you have a different group of guys, and you try to play to their strengths, and you coach to the strengths of your talent, and this year that is the strength of the talent,” Carter said.
Going along with the versatility, adding depth in the room was a big goal of the offseason. Now, Carter feels every player can do whatever is asked of them.
“They all can line up outside, they also can run inside zone, outside zone, whatever it is we need them to do,” he said.
A guy that has shown a lot of versatility earlier in fall camp is junior Portland State transfer Quincy Craig.
“He did a lot of things, catching the ball as well as in the special team space,” Carter said about Craig. “So you’ve seen the kid that can run the ball, but excellent routes and good hands and is really physical in the run game.”
One of the underlying benefits from having two guys take most of the reps last season is that now a guy like Reescano who has a year of Big 12 play under his belt.
“He’s played in the Big 12 now for a year, so he brings something to the table that nobody else in the room has,” Carter said. “He has experience playing in some games, so his leadership is open and welcomed.”
Reescano had 78 carries for 359 yards and one touchdown in 2024. Most players would be ready to boost those numbers, but he is just ready to work hard everyday to win more games.
“He’s not a real rah rah guy,” said Carter. “He likes to just put his hard hat on and go to work, and he’s a pleasure to coach, and I have a lot of fun with him.”
With Conley gone, the void is going to be filled with another experienced player in Texas State transfer Ismail Mahdi.
Something that Carter has done this offseason is pair up some of the younger guys with the veterans of the group. Reescano has taken freshman Wesley Yarbrough under his wing and Mahdi has taken another freshman in Cornelius Warren III.
“I like Corn, he’s a learner,” Mahdi said about Warren. “He wants to get out there and just learn, get into the playbook, and just wants to get out there and make plays.”
“I see a lot of myself in Wesley, like as a freshman, because I didn’t know everything, but I wanted to learn it so bad,” Reescano said about Yarbrough.
Overall, the running back room is in a similar position to where it was last year, but maybe just a bit more depth. What that means for Carter is that the future is bright.
“Arizona Wildcats football going to a bowl game, going to a Rose Bowl,” he said. “We’re all about the team and whatever we gotta do to help this team win, that’s what we want to do.”
How does the running back room see itself? There was only one word for Reescano to describe it.
“Unstoppable,” he said. “It’s hard to stop something that you can’t predict.”
One of the bigger parts to the Seth Doege offense is balance. Carter and the running backs believe they will be able to provide that balance once they hit the field against Hawaii on August 30th.