Now the good news for the Huskies.
What’s that you say? There can’t possibly be good news for a team that is 11-26 under its current head coach, a man plenty of people are ready to run out of town. They’re bowless for what seems like forever — OK, since 2002, but that feels like forever to football fans — and coming off a humiliating loss to a hated rival. What good news could there possibly be?
Well consider me the beacon of optimism, because I found some.
At 0-1, with morale low, the Huskies are in great position. Impossible you say?
Consider this fact: the Huskies started the 2006 season 4-1. How’d that work for ‘em? Oh yeah, they lost their next six games. Hey, at least Washington won the Apple Cup in 2006, something that didn’t happen last season when, would you look at that, the Huskies got off to another promising start.
Remember last season when the Huskies were 2-0, fresh of a win over everyone’s favorite Fiesta Bowl darling, Boise State? It wasn’t even a year ago that the Huskies beat the 22nd-ranked Broncos, then led 10th-ranked Ohio State 7-3 at halftime a week later.
“We have our swagger back,” senior receiver Marcel Reece said after the Boise State win. “The Huskies are back.”
And then?
Thud.
Again.
The Huskies lost the Ohio State game, not to mention the five that followed on the way to a 4-9 season.
High hopes? Once again, they were crushed.
Hey, to be fair, Reece didn’t say which Huskies were back. Maybe he meant the 2006 version.
In 2008, there is none of that early-season false hype. High hopes were sufficiently crushed during a three-hour whipping in Eugene. From here, there’s nowhere to go but up. If there was any overconfidence on this team prior to August 30, as quarterback Jake Locker said there might have been, consider it gone. These Huskies still believe they can win, but they certainly won’t be overconfident — not that they should have been at this time last week.
Not working for you? Didn’t think so. And neither does Tyrone Willingham.
“I’m not quite sure about that one,” he said with a chuckle Thursday, shooting down my brilliant theory. “I’d much prefer to be working with two wins. But I think the difficulty that we play early is a plus for our football team. Again, if you’re looking at young guys, and we do have a number of those guys on our squad, there is some tremendous growth that takes place between the first and second ballgame. But just playing a difficult demanding schedule helps you grow.”
Ok fine, here is some news that actually could help Washington when it hosts 15th-ranked Brigham Young Saturday.
BYU might actually be under more pressure than Washington. Yes, the Huskies are playing to redeem themselves after an embarrassing loss, and yes they all know their coach won’t last past this season if things don’t get drastically better. But the Cougars, they’ve got some serious pressure weighing on them too.
It’s all spelled out on page 14 of BYU’s media guide:
“The Quest for perfection,” it says.
According to All-Mountain West defensive end Jan Jorgensen, last year’s 11-2 record wasn’t good enough. The Cougars want to take it to the next level, joining Utah, Boise State and Hawaii as recent mid-majors to crash the BCS bowl party.
They know that doing that will likely require an undefeated season, and the first big test in that run comes Saturday. At least the Huskies could, in theory anyway, bounce back from an 0-2 start to make a bowl game. If BYU loses Saturday, their BCS dreams are all but over.
Cougars offensive coordinator Rob Anae insists that “The Quest” has nothing to do with wins and losses.
“You guys in the media have completely missed the mark with the quest for perfection,” he said. “You guys interpret that as wins and losses, and we have never ever put that to our players. That deal is referring to every-day greatness. All you can ask on that level is their very best, and that is our quest, working for our very best.”
Consider this guy in the media unconvinced. When you promote a “Quest for perfection” you leave the meaning up to interpretation, and the obvious interpretation is that the Cougars hope to run the table.
Even their players admit as much.
“If we want to try to be close to BCS at the end of the season, this is definitely an important game for us,” said junior quarterback Max Hall. “So we’re really doing everything we can and we know it’s a big game we need to win.”
So who knows, maybe the Huskies catch a team playing under even more pressure than themselves. Maybe Hall and company succumb to the pressure of a road game against a BCS-conference opponent.
Maybe, like they have in each of the past two seasons, the Huskies take fans’ early-season emotions, and flip them around.
For once, that would be a welcome surprise.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on UW sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
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