Wildcats still stunned by game's wild finish

TUCSON, Ariz. — Arizona wide receiver Delashaun Dean says he will never wear those football shoes again, not after that weird play in Seattle.

Nick Foles' short pass under duress bounced off Dean's size 14 ½ shoe — and, the receiver insists, hit the ground — then Washington's Mason Foster grabbed it out of the air and ran 37 yards with 2:37 left for what proved to be the winning touchdown in the Huskies' 36-33 victory.

"I felt it graze my foot, but the way the ball bounced up, it would have hit my foot a lot harder," Dean said. "I figured it had to hit the ground, then after seeing the pictures you could actually see the black beads from the turf jump up when the ball hit the ground. It's pretty obvious when you look at it. I don't know how it got missed."

Countered Jake Locker, quarterback of a Huskies team that a week ago had been lamenting calls that didn't go their way against Notre Dame: "I don't think it would have bounced that high if it hit the turf."

The play was on display on several Web sites Monday, and from one replay angle, captured in stop action, the ball appeared to hit the ground.

"I thought it hit his foot," said Washington coach Steve Sarkisian.

Arizona coach Mike Stoops, meanwhile, said he was resigned to the non-call.

"They are what they call," he said Monday. "There's nothing you can do about it now. It is what it is. You just live with it and go on."

Arizona had a 33-21 lead with less than 3 minutes to play in Seattle, then Washington scored two touchdowns in a span of 18 seconds.

First, Locker threw 25 yards to Kavario Middleton to cut the Wildcats' lead to 33-28 with 2:55 remaining.

After the subsequent kickoff, Foles went to the line of scrimmage on first down and saw the Huskies packed in to stop the run. He decided to throw the short pass to Dean, a play that had worked all night.

But this time, Foles said, a linebacker got in his line of vision, "and made me throw a bad ball."

Did he think the ball touched the ground?

"I thought it did when I looked at it," Foles said, "but it's one of those things where the ref's got to make a call. I guess they didn't have enough evidence to overturn it. It's a tough break, a weird bounce and we just have to move forward."

Stoops thought the referees wrongly overturned a fumble call that Arizona recovered earlier in the game and that the timekeeper was slow in turning on the clock several times. What does he think of replay reviews now?

"I think it probably evens out. That's what they say, 'Life always evens itself out.' That's what you hope," Stoops said. "I don't know. It helped Washington. It's funny how it evened out very quickly, you know what I'm saying."

Seattle Times staff reporter Bob Condotta contributed to this report.