TEMPE, ARIZ. — After each loss, after each third-quarter meltdown, Washington’s players and coaches insist that confidence is still high. That they can be good team.
“Everybody’s confident, we just need to go out and get it done,” quarterback Jake Locker said after Washington’s 44-20 loss to Arizona State. “We have the team to do it, we’ve just got to go get it done.”
And after each loss, after each third-quarter meltdown, it’s getting harder and harder to believe them.
Walking out of the visitors locker room at Saturday’s debacle in the desert, the Huskies could not mask — nor should they have been able to — the disappointment of a fourth straight loss.
When backup tailback Keegan Herring ran past Washington’s defense for a 76-yard exclamation point on a 21-0 third quarter, he might as well have been running away with Washington’s bowl hopes cradled under his arm instead.
With a bye week to prepare for ASU and to recover from three straight losses, the Huskies needed this one. A win would have made them 3-3 coming home for two games. It would have made their bowl aspirations seem entirely obtainable.
Instead, very little changed after the bye week. Just like they were against USC, UCLA and Ohio State, the Huskies were competitive with Arizona State for a half. In this case, Washington led 17-13 at the break and started the third quarter with the ball. A turnover ended Washington’s first drive, however, and the wheels fell off quickly and dramatically from there.
In one half of football, the things that the Huskies were supposed to have fixed during the bye week came back to hurt them once again. They were badly out played in the second half. Again. Locker struggled with his accuracy. Again. When Locker was accurate, receivers dropped too many passes. Again. The defense missed tackles and was out of position, allowing big runs. Again.
A bowl game is still a possibility for Washington, which now needs to win five of its last seven to get bowl eligible, but it’s hard to imagine how the team that we saw Saturday night is going to accomplish that. The team has shown promise. It has given fans a reason to be excited, only to let that excitement evaporate in the second half.
The players and coaches could only shake their heads after the latest loss and wonder what to do next. Perhaps worse than four straight losses is the fact that nobody seems to know how to fix it. How does a team play four good teams close for a half, then fall apart in the second half each time? How do the Huskies manage to lose the third quarter 56-0 in those four losses?
The players are making mistakes, but some questions need to be asked of the coaches as well. What’s happening in that locker room between the second and third quarters? Why are players losing focus — as several players and offensive coordinator Tim Lappano both said — after playing strong first halves? Why are the Huskies winning the first half and getting blown out in the second?
“That’s a tough locker room, because it should be a very disappointed locker room that I just walked out of, which it was,” Tyrone Willingham said. “They don’t have an explanation, and I don’t have an explanation for our third quarter. Why we would be right there then all of a sudden do a series of things and let it get away. The key is to just keep working. If we keep working, good things will happen.”
The Huskies will keep battling — that’s been something they’ve done admirably in losses, especially against USC and UCLA — but it’s getting harder with each loss to believe that this team has made the big improvements everyone thought they had after a 2-0 start.
“We don’t want to be here, we never would have imagined it, and it sucks, but it’s where we are,” said Locker. “We can’t look behind us. We’ve got to look ahead of us. We have a good football team, and we’ve got to remember that and we’ve got to go out and play like that next week.”
Looking at Washington’s brutal schedule before the season started, it was hard to find more than four or five winnable games. A 2-0 start changed a lot of expectations, and the buzz was started. The Huskies were back. Now, at 2-4, that initial assessment might have been the correct one.
The Huskies are better than last year’s 5-7 team, but against this schedule, their record isn’t likely going to show it. The season can now only be saved by a strong second half finish. Something the Huskies haven’t exactly been known for so far this season.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
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