Final numbers and quotes

Published 10:38 pm Saturday, November 3, 2007

Some stats from Washington’s 27-9 victory

The Huskies had 31 first downs to Stanford’s 14, and 539 yards of offense to Stanford’s 253.

I mentioned it earlier, but Louis Rankin had a huge night, gaining 255 yards on 36 carried. Jake Locker almost gave the Huskies two 100-yard rushers, but came up just short with 97. He also completed 16 of 32 passes for 151 yards with an interception.

Another big number for Washington was the defense’s six sacks, the most it has had since week one against Syracuse.

On the injury front, there was nothing major. Nate Williams left the game with a hamstring injury, and offensive tackle Chad Macklin had some back spasms, though Willingham indicated that neither were too serious.

Kent Baer, who has been under fire lately for the play of his defense, said he was happy for his players after their strong performance.

“I’m happy for the players. It’s not about me. It’s about those kids and how hard they work and the amount of effort they put in.”

Safety Mesphin Forrester, who had a key fumble recovery in the game, was one of many happy players after the game:

“After last week and the numbers they put up, as a secondary we made a pact to each other that we were going to get it done. The guys played tough.

It was a great feeling. We haven’t had a win since week two, so to go out here and win this football game is great for our football team. It gets the ball rolling, and now we’ve got to go in tomorrow, correct our mistakes and get ready for Oregon State.

It’s real nice. We know we can do it as a defense, so to go out there and really do it, it makes us feel a lot better, more confident. So it’s a great thing.

Man, it felt so good. When I saw the clock ticking down and we really got the W, it was a great feeling.”

Juan Garcia summed it up best, saying: “It feels good. We finally got that gorilla off our back. It feels great. The whole theme for this week was, enough is enough. We were tired of everything these last six weeks. When we were warming up, we said, ‘screw this, we ain’t going to lose this game. Enough is enough.’”

Garcia then showed his humerous side, noticing that Jake Locker had just come out of the locker room to meet with reporters.

“Jake Locker is here, so you guys had better go,” he said.

And speaking of Locker, he came out of the locker room with ice bags on his left elbow and right shoulder, but insisted that both were just bumps and bruises, and were nothing to worry about.