EUGENE, Ore. — They are proud of their football history here, particularly a certain play that occurred in 1994, and so the Oregon Ducks will wear throwback uniforms on Saturday to commemorate what Kenny Wheaton did at Autzen Stadium 20 seasons ago.
Indeed, this year marks the 20th anniversary of “The Pick,” the interception that Wheaton returned 97 yards for a touchdown with 49 seconds remaining to seal a 31-20 Oregon victory over the Washington Huskies.
Wheaton served as the grand marshal of Oregon’s homecoming parade on Friday. And his ballyhooed interception surely will be played more than once on the Autzen video board prior to Washington’s 5 p.m. game at No. 9 Oregon on Saturday.
That play, which propelled Oregon to the championship of the then Pacific-10 Conference and a Rose Bowl appearance that season, changed a lot. The Ducks, behind a seemingly endless supply of cash from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, became one of the nation’s elite programs, with the facilities, recruits, victories and facilities to prove it.
And they’ve lost to the Huskies only four times since.
Current UW-UO affairs are particularly bleak for the Huskies, as their losing streak in this once-contentious rivalry has swelled to 10 — UO is a 20-point favorite this year — more than a decade now separating them from their most recent triumph over their most hated foe.
First-year UW coach Chris Petersen, who was Oregon’s receivers coach from 1995-2000 under Mike Bellotti, remembers when the shoe was on the other foot. And those shoes weren’t all being produced by Nike.
“I know how the rivalry was, because when I was at Oregon it was kind of flipped in a lot of ways,” said Petersen, who left Oregon after the 2000 season to become offensive coordinator at Boise State. “When a team starts winning a lot against a certain team, that becomes their rival, and maybe not even so much to the other guys. You’ve got to win some to even it out, to make somebody your rival. But yeah, when somebody wins a lot, I know it frustrates a lot of people.”
Not that Petersen will hold Oregon on a higher pedestal than any other UW opponent this season. His emphasis, as with nearly all coaches, is on winning one game per week against whomever happens to be on the schedule.
That philosophy, of course, reminds of former Ducks coach Chip Kelly, who told his team to prepare each week for a “nameless, faceless” opponent.
“There’s not a whole lot to bring up about Oregon,” Petersen said on Thursday. “I don’t need to say anything. They know. There really hasn’t been a ton of talk about that. It always comes back to us.”
And back to how good the Ducks still are. They followed a 31-24 upset loss to Arizona at home two weeks ago with a 42-30 victory at UCLA. Star quarterback Marcus Mariota still hasn’t thrown an interception this season, though he has thrown 17 touchdown passes, and has Oregon ranked No. 1 nationally in passing efficiency.
Mariota benefited last week from the return of left tackle Jake Fisher, one of a handful of Ducks offensive linemen to suffer an injury this season. Their pass protection has suffered as a result.
“(Mariota) can run and throw,” said Huskies outside linebacker Hau’oli Kikaha, who leads the nation with 10 sacks. “He’s a dual-threat back there, so he’s going to be a key for us on defense. Just getting after their O-line. Defensively, that’s what we’re going to do, is stop those two things — O-line and quarterback — and let the DBs handle the rest.”
There might be hope they can stop him this year. UW has its most talented defense since this losing streak began, and is coming off a game in which it limited California to just seven points after the Bears averaged 50 through their first five games.
“It’s big. It’s huge,” Huskies linebacker Shaq Thompson said of Saturday’s visit to Autzen. “We’ll have a chip on our shoulder and we’ll go in there like we did with Cal and play hard.”
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