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Every player. Every coach. The sideline is cleared.

“The fourth quarter is our favorite quarter. ... It’s a very important part of our standard, how we finish and what we do at the end of games,� said Wildcats coach Jedd Fisch. “You don’t win games in the first quarter, in the second quarter. ... You win games in the fourth quarter. That’s where you win games.

“If you score enough points in the fourth quarter, you’ll win. That’s what we talk about, that’s our mentality, that’s our focus and we remind them that when we get in there.�

In the fourth quarter, the Wildcats have outscored their opponents 80-37 this season. In ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s unprecedented three-game winning streak over ranked opponents between Washington State, Oregon State and UCLA, the Wildcats bested their opponents by a combined 38-14.

Fisch breaks up ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s 12-game regular season into four quarters. The 21st-ranked Wildcats’ (6-3) road matchup at Colorado (4-5) in Boulder on Saturday at noon is the start of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s fourth quarter.

If this season was a game, the Wildcats have a comfortable lead after winning the first and third quarters. Even in the second quarter, the Wildcats had two Top-10 losses to Washington and USC by a combined nine points, including a triple-overtime thriller in Los Angeles. The Wildcats were inches away from potentially beating Mississippi State in Starkville despite committing five turnovers.

The Wildcats’ loss to USC became a “turning point in our program for this season,â€� said Fisch. Then ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ rattled off three straight wins, lifted the Wildcats in the College Football Playoff rankings (21st), Associated Press Top 25 (23rd) and USA Today Coaches Poll (24th) — and became bowl eligible for the first time since 2017. Just a little over two years ago, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ scraped by Covid-affected Cal for Fisch’s first and only win of his inaugural season at the helm.

Now ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ is in the national conversation.

“It’s all you could ask for, right? Throughout these tougher times through ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ football in the recent past, I would say there were not many conversations about ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ football,â€� Fisch said. “Now when you’re being talked about and you’re becoming relevant, that helps your recruiting, that helps more opportunities for your kids.

“Maybe there’s some more NIL opportunities the more you’re talked about. The more wins you have, the more the fan base is willing to support our kids. The more money that goes into a collective, the more multimedia rights to some marketing opportunities our kids might have. Everything that we can do to help our kids is happening.

“Winning, as I’ve told them for three years, is what really helps. That’s the truth. You want to get paid more? Win more. You want to get more opportunities? Win more. That’s what it really comes down to and that’s the biggest benefit that they’re seeing.�

Winning was once hard to come by for a program stripped down to the studs by the Kevin Sumlin regime that went 9-20 in three years and lost to its arch-rival by 63 points on national television.

“You can see the growth from that season until now,â€� said ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ junior defensive back Treydan Stukes. “The culture has changed, the fans are more involved. It’s a complete 180-(degree turn).â€�

“It’s a significant step forward. Just being able to trust the process as a team, being able to put our trust in what Coach Fisch’s vision was for us. Even when he first got here and we went 1-11, we all just kept building, kept building, kept building, kept building, and we’re finding some success now, but we’re still not satisfied. We’re trying to take the next step again.�

The next step, said Fisch: “Win one game at a time and try to be 1-0. We’ve got three games left.�

“We qualified for a bowl, but that doesn’t mean anything other than we qualified for a bowl,� Fisch added. “It wasn’t the last game of the year, and we were 5-6, won the 12th game to go to a bowl game and then we find out two days later where we’re going. Now we go play Colorado and try to get to 7-3. That’s the goal. One of our goals was to play 13 or more games. We hit that goal. That’s all that happened, we hit that goal to play 13 or more games.

“Now we have the opportunity to reset and try to achieve other goals, one of which is clearly to go 1-0 this week and take care of business in Boulder.�

Colorado ends ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s streak of ranked opponents, but the Buffaloes are equipped to upset the Wildcats in their first season under head coach Deion Sanders, who hauled in over 50 transfers this past offseason. Colorado started off the season 3-0 with wins over TCU, Nebraska and Colorado State, but have lost five out of the last six games, including a 29-point meltdown against Stanford.

While ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ has its mojo again, the Wildcats can’t afford to overlook anyone because they almost lost at rebuilding Stanford until quarterback Noah Fifita led the Wildcats down the field on a go-ahead touchdown drive in place of the injured Jayden de Laura.

“It’s a tough place to go play, so this will be a tough game on the road and our guys are looking forward to the challenge,â€� said ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen.

A win would match ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s season win total from the 2017 — and set up a Top-20 showdown with the Utah Utes for the final home game of the season next week.

“We need to sell out that home game,� Fisch said. “We have 41,000 tickets sold right now. They sold 5,000 tickets after the UCLA game for this game, and now we have to find a way to sell the remaining nine.

“When we get on this plane to go to Boulder, we gotta play our best game or none of it is going to matter.�