SIERRA VISTA — Insomuch as it was supposed to be an audition for starting quarterback, Saturday night’s scrimmage in front of more than 500 fans at Buena High’s Loveless Stadium was a bust.

“I thought they were bad tonight,” Arizona offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes said of his quarterbacks after his unit spent more than an hour trying to get on the board against the Wildcat defense. “We’re at that point in camp where they’ve gotta grind through it, and that’s was what disappointing. We’ve gotta be a lot tougher at that position and be able to deal with adversity.”

On the last play of the first-string vs. first-string, Nick Foles hit Juron Criner in the back of the end zone for a five-yard touchdown strike, the first points scored after 13 offensive possessions.

Despite that throw, Foles didn’t particularly outshine fellow sophomore Matt Scott.

“It was almost like the quarterbacks came out flat,” Foles said. “Our run game looked good and we ran the ball the whole night just because we couldn’t throw it. That’s the quarterbacks’ fault. We didn’t play very well and we take the full blame.”

The quarterbacks didn’t get many chances to make plays downfield. Virtually every passing situation was a three-step drop and quick throw.

To be fair, the Wildcat offense was missing leading receivers Delashaun Dean and Rob Gronkowski with injuries, the defense has become very familiar with the offensive schemes, and thirdly, Dykes and head coach Mike Stoops did not want to unveil the full schema of their attack in a scrimmage open to the public.

“We’re trying to stay somewhat generic,” Stoops said. “We’re a little more vanilla now and we’ve gotta just keep working with it. We’ll have some scrimmages later on that won’t be open to the media or fans where we’ll polish some things off.”

Stoops tried to put Saturday night’s disappointment in perspective.

“The first scrimmage is usually the roughest,” he said. “Without four starters on offense that really complicates things. It wasn’t a great night offensively and I was disappointed in the kicking game. But it was a typical first scrimmage.”

While all the attention and the hand-wringing revolved around the disappointing offense, Brooks Reed and the Arizona defense excelled, holding the offense to three missed field goal by tries by Alex Zendejas of more than 40 yards before the final play.

“It was quite the opposite of last year where the offense was scoring each time,” Reed said. “We remember that and we’re proud of what we put out here tonight but we really haven’t proven anything.”

Reed said the defense has tried to steer clear of the quarterback controversy.

“We try not to focus on it; we try to focus on each individual job,” the linebacker said. “We know the offense is trying to find the rhythym and the quarterbacks are going to fight and compete and that can only make us better. It’s crunch time right now and one of them is going to have to step up.”

With the season starting Sept. 5, Dykes isn’t in a rush to name a starting quarterback, but folllowing Saturday’s scrimmage he made a point of exempting third-string quarterback Bryson Beirne from his criticism and suggested he might get more reps with the first team. On the play immediately following Foles’ touchdown pass to Criner, Beirne hit former Buena Colt Devin Veal on a 7-yard hitch to start a long drive.

“We didn’t want to do too much. It’s hard in scrimmages when the quarterbacks aren’t live (eligible to tackle) so there’s a lot of things in the run game with them you’d like to do,” Dykes said. “But the guys have got to play better and got to lead the team better — that was probably the most disappointing thing … We’re looking for someone to take the job from the other one and run with it and that hasn’t happened yet.”

For Scott and Foles this process starts all over again on Monday.

“We’re going to watch film, see what’s going wrong and get it fixed,” Scott said. “We just need to focus better, look at reads, run plays, execute and we’ll be all right.”

The final stats had Foles completing 10 of 15 passes for 97 yards and a touchdown, Scott completing 10-of-18 for 78 yards and an interception by Mike Turner on an ill-advised throw that thwarted an effective drive.

Beirne completed 5-of-7 for 38 yards and a 4-yard touchdown pass to Kylan Butler to close the scrimmage.