Huskies, Cardinal searching for success

Published 11:50 pm Friday, September 26, 2008

SEATTLE — It’s no surprise that both Stanford and Washington view tonight’s Pac-10 football game as a must win.

The Huskies (0-3) are desperate to salvage their season and their coach’s job, while Stanford, at 2-2, sees this contest as one it must win if the Cardinal hopes to have a winning season and play in its first bowl game in seven years.

The Huskies and Cardinal are two teams that share plenty of similarities, so it makes sense that so much is riding on tonight’s game for both squads. Both are struggling programs trying to climb back into the realm of Pac-10 relevance, and both see this game as a stepping stone in that progression.

Stanford hasn’t had a winning season since 2001, Tyrone Willingham’s last year as head coach. Now at Washington, Willingham is trying find the success here that he had in his last Pac-10 stop. The Huskies’ last winning season was a 7-6 campaign six years ago, and Washington followed that with a 6-6 season in 2003. Every season since has featured more losses than wins, including an 11-28 stretch under Willingham.

While winning the game is the focus for the Huskies tonight, Willingham admits he’ll feel a sense of nostalgia going against his former team.

“There is and there has to be,” he said. “I don’t try to downplay that, but I do try to put it in the proper place. I have good memories from the places that I have been, wonderful people, wonderful relationships that are developed over time and are still maintained, so you want to do well, but that connection is there. But at the same time you want to perform well, you want to win, and there may be a little extra (sentiment) in the minutes right before the ballgame. But again, I try to put it in the right place.”

Both Stanford and Washington have endured multiple coaching changes and one-win seasons this decade, but both talk of turning things around and returning to their winning ways.

“They’re a team that’s like us, getting better every year,” senior defensive tackle Johnie Kirton said earlier this week. “This Saturday should be a good one.”

The bad news for Husky fans, however, is that Stanford might be ahead of Washington in the quest to turn things around.

Both teams had four wins last year, but Stanford was coming off a 1-11 year in 2006 (and Husky fans don’t need a reminder of who that one win came against). The Cardinal also have a signature victory — a 24-23 shocker at USC last fall — that tops any win of the Willingham era in Seattle. This year, Stanford is off to a better start than Washington, though against a much softer schedule.

That’s what makes tonight so intriguing. This game, as well as the rest of this season, will tell whether Willingham’s old team or current one is closer to reaching its goals. An impressive win by either team could send a message to the rest of the conference, while the losing team likely is destined to challenge Washington State for the Pac-10 basement.

While Washington’s four-win season last year left those inside and out of the program disappointed, most viewed Stanford’s 4-8 record as a step in the right direction. That’s what happens when one team, Washington, won five games in 2006, while Stanford won one.

The word from Stanford is that the culture around the football program is changing, and it seems a lot of that is owed to second-year head coach Jim Harbaugh.

“It really is a completely different feeling,” senior center Alex Fletcher said. “No matter what situation we’re in, whether we’re winning or losing, this team plays hard from whistle to whistle. The team has a lot of fight, and I think that’s really the main difference from what we were to what we are now, and all of the credit for that goes to coach Harbaugh for definitely changing the culture around here.”

A changed culture at Stanford has fueled high hopes, while the mood will remain somber around Washington’s program until the Huskies start winning. Either way, tonight could mark the start of something good for one team, and a step backward for the other.

Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington athletics, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog.