Stanford football — and whoever lines up at tailback — visits the Arizona Wildcats tomorrow at 4 p.m. in a game the team must win to keep its lingering bowl hopes alive.

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Junior running back Anthony Kimble turned in the best game of his career against TCU, but may be unavailable against the Wildcats as the Cardinal looks increasingly thin in the backfield. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8031
Gus Jewell

Junior running back Anthony Kimble turned in the best game of his career against TCU, but may be unavailable against the Wildcats as the Cardinal looks increasingly thin in the backfield.

Written on a locker room whiteboard are the team’s goals, set before the season. “Win a national title. Win a conference title.” Maybe those will come in future years. The most realistic target on the list, “make a bowl game,” is still in play for the 2-4 (1-3 Pac-10) Cardinal at the season’s midpoint.

“I’m very pleased with the way our team has gone through adversity,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. “They haven’t won as many games as we’d like to [have won] at the halfway point, but overall, I’m very proud of our team and looking forward to the next six weeks.”

Bowl eligibility requires six victories, or for Stanford, winning all but two of their remaining games: at Arizona, at Oregon State, Washington, at Washington State, Notre Dame and Cal. The top-10 Bears will be heavy favorites and Oregon State and Washington are no slouches either, so any likely bowl game scenario for Stanford involves a win against the lowly Wildcats (2-5, 1-3 Pac-10).

Strangely, both Stanford and Arizona probably hope tomorrow’s game is decided when the Cardinal has the ball. That’s because Stanford’s offense and Arizona’s defense are each team’s strength, ranking 73rd and 67th, respectively, of the 119 Division I-A teams in the country.

A no-name front seven anchors the Wildcat defense and kept it close in last week’s 20-13 near-upset of USC. They have allowed just 120 ground yards per game, and held the Trojans to a meager 276 total yards.

In the secondary, standout corner Antoine Cason is perhaps the best defensive back sophomore quarterback Tavita Pritchard has yet to see. But the rest of the unit is thin, and the Stanford receiving corps of sophomore Richard Sherman and seniors Mark Bradford and Evan Moore have to be liking the opportunities they’ve seen in the film room. Sherman has caught for an average of 83 yards per game thus far this season, good for fourth-best in the conference.

But given their front seven’s strength and Stanford’s personnel issues, Arizona may sit back in a zone and dare the Cardinal to run. The Card’s top three tailbacks, sophomore Toby Gerhart, junior Anthony Kimble (the Pac-10’s No. 3 rusher) and freshman Jeremy Stewart, all may not play because of injuries, which places a heavy burden on sophomore Tyrone McGraw and senior Jason Evans. McGraw and Evans are no typical fourth-string backs: McGraw factors into the return game heavily and Evans started in previous seasons, but the potential loss of the top three tailbacks is a high hurdle.

The razor-thin backfield is one reason Stanford is a 10-point underdog. Another is a defense that seemed to regress in last week’s 38-36 heartbreaking homecoming loss against TCU, yielding 494 yards, 344 of them through the air. Unlike most struggling teams, youth is actually a valid excuse in Stanford’s case — six underclassmen and just two seniors will start for the Cardinal’s ‘D’ tomorrow. Still, the numbers are ugly: Stanford is allowing 294 passing and 161 rushing yards each game.

“The effort has been good and some of these big plays, when you break down what happened — we were in a position to make it but just blew an assignment or missed a tackle and that led to the big play,” Harbaugh said of his defense. “I think we have a level of consistency that’s growing and getting better all the time.”

Arizona’s offense is very much a one-man show. That’s as much credit to junior quarterback Willie Tuitama and his All-Pac-10-worthy statline (2,055 yards, 15 touchdowns, seven interceptions, 62.4 percent accuracy, 130.4 rating) as it is an indictment of the rest of the team. Reciever Michael Thomas (506 yards, six touchdowns) is Tuitama’s favorite target, but the rest of the offense — especially the ground game — has yet to shine.

“They throw it all over the place with an experienced quarterback and excellent receivers,” Harbaugh said. “I think being able to get pressure on the quarterback and covering those wideouts will be key for us this week.”

And for Stanford, this week is key to maintaining any hope of attaining one of this season’s top goals: making a bowl game.