During their final preparations for Thursday night’s game, Arizona concluded its pre-game pep talk with a video of lightning striking a man twice in 30 seconds. The team chuckled, but the message was clear: do it again.

A year ago when Oregon played at Arizona, it was senior day. It was the final game some of Arizona’s head coach Rich Rodriguez’s players would play at home. They then took that feeling and produced a demolishing 42-16 upset win over then No. 5 Oregon.

Now in a different setting, the same song was written as Arizona dashed plenty of expectations laid out out for the second-ranked Ducks, winning 31-24 and putting them at 5-0 for the first time since 1998.

“We knew we were going to go into a battle,” running back Terris Jones-Grigsby said. “But that’s Arizona football.”

It was just 7-3 at halftime in favor of Oregon. Two high-scoring teams were kept quiet for 30 minutes, but when the Wildcats lined up to receive the ball to begin the second half, Arizona kicked into gear. Their opening drive of the half went for 80 yards on six plays for a touchdown. Then they scored again. And again. And all of a sudden Arizona had a ten point lead over the second ranked team in the nation in the third quarter.

“The defense came to play,” Arizona quarterback Anu Solomon said. “We got to help them by scoring.”

What the defense did was hold the Ducks to just 17 points in the second half, and when it mattered most, they came up big. Which then paved the way for Solomon, playing in his first true road test, to set aside any concerns critics may’ve had for him. The true freshman passed for 287 yards and one touchdown.

However, it wasn’t just Solomon performing.

“Our offense started executing better in the second half,” Rodriguez said. “They kept competing.”

Then in the fourth the game got close. Oregon was within one touchdown drive to retie the game. Oregon was rolling after consecutive first downs on a drive that started at their own nine-yard line. But on first and ten, Scooby Wright III came up with the play of the game, forcing and recovering a fumble off Oregon’s Marcus Mariota.

“It’s amazing what belief in our defense can do,” Solomon said.

Within the final two and a half minutes of the game, lightning finally struck, again.

“Arizona is here to play for the next couple years, and years to come,” Solomon said.

Follow Andrew Bantly on Twitter @andrewbantly