Both his head coach and his teammates rallied behind quarterback Jayden de Laura Saturday in the face of a four-interception game and a 31-20 loss to his former team.

The third-year quarterback didn’t hide his emotional investment in the Wildcats’ showdown with Washington State during the week. He wanted to play well. Instead, he threw four second-half interceptions as the Wildcat offense sputtered one week after upsetting UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Asked if he thought de Laura pressed, coach Jedd Fisch offered an emphatic defense of his quarterback.

“No, I don’t think anything had to do with pressing,” Fisch said. “There were some plays that could be made that weren’t made for a lot of reasons, but I think that I did not see any pressing going on. I thought those were just plays that were made by their defense that caused some turnovers.”

Tailback Michael Wiley said the same.

“His headspace was where it was supposed to be,” Wiley said. “Sometimes you have a game where things just don’t go your way. It’s part of the game of football. Sometimes you just have that day. But I know for a fact that Jayden is going to watch this film and get better for ASU.”

Arizona’s offense looked out of sync against the Cougars, with de Laura not on the same page as his receivers on several of his interceptions. Fisch offered explanations for a few of them.

“The second one was a miscommunication with the protection,” he said. “So the offensive line protected one way, quarterback thought there was a protection issue, which there was, which there shouldn’t have been, and he tried to get a hot throw out and the receiver didn’t expect to be hot because he shouldn’t have been. That was the interception to Jacob (Cowing) and then the one with Tanner (McLachlan), Tanner should have kept running.”

There was also a moment where de Laura fired into the endzone on third-and-10, looking for Dorian Singer. The ball fell incomplete as Singer chopped his route short, leading to a brief scuffle on the sideline between the two. Fisch and several others separated the two — who appeared to make amends shortly after — and said after the game it was just a matter of two competitive people wanting a play to work that didn’t.

“That was just two competitive guys. There was a play that we were hoping to make, and we didn’t so there was just two competitive guys, just disappointed in each other,” Fisch said. “They’re fine. He threw (Singer) a touchdown on the last play of the game.”

Arizona sits at 4-7 on the season — still a marked improvement over last year — and it’ll look for win No. 5 next week against Arizona State in the Territorial Cup. Kickoff on Friday, Nov. 25 is set for 12 p.m. PT on FS1.