SEATTLE – Despite their 1-3 record, members of the University of Washington football team insist that they are still confident and excited about the future.
The Huskies say the fact that, other than against California, they don’t feel they’ve been outplayed leads them to believe that if they just clean up the mistakes that have plagued them, they can turn the season around.
Of course, to do it, they’ll have to handle a brutal October schedule that sends them to UCLA, Oregon and Arizona State and has No. 1 USC coming to Husky Stadium.
“We’ve got to play everyone, so that’s not an excuse,” safety Dashon Goldson said. “We can’t say, ‘Well, we’re playing this team, so we can’t win.’ We believe we can win all our games. We’re still confident.”
It’s true that the Huskies were competitive in losses to Air Force and Notre Dame only to make errors, physical and mental, that took away chances to win. The players say they have the personnel and the system to be competitive. And coach Tyrone Willingham says talent isn’t the issue, it’s getting the talent to perform at the highest level.
“We can’t worry about what we don’t have,” Willingham said. “The young men we have are the best that we have. We’ve got to make them the best players they can be.”
They’ll have to be really good to go on the road Saturday and beat undefeated UCLA (3-0), ranked No. 20 in the country and coming off of a bye week. But players say the opponent is irrelevant. What they see in themselves is a team that has given away two games.
“People want to say that we’re down but we’re not,” safety C.J. Wallace said. “Everyone is excited to come out here and show what we can do. When we’ve been in the right place, when we’ve made the right decisions, we’ve done real good. We just need to do those things every time.”
That’s what Willingham has seen. He said he’s seen enough from his team to be optimistic and excited about the direction the team is headed. He admits that this isn’t the start that he had hoped for but said he knew things wouldn’t be easy.
“We’ve played spurts of football pretty well, but as you know, that doesn’t get you a victory,” Willingham said. “You can’t walk away feeling delighted or pleased. But there are some spurts there that are darn good football. What we’ve got to do is put 60 minutes of those spurts in place.”
It’s not all a rosy attitude, though. Willingham said that his team is still making too many errors. Washington’s run defense has been spotty at best, the play of the defensive line has been inconsistent, and so has the Husky running game. That means that it’s more than just simple cleanup that has to be done.
“We need to do everything better,” linebacker Joe Lobendahn said. “It’s just about working hard in practice and keep learning where we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“We’ve shown what we can do at times,” center Brad Vanneman added. “But we need to do it all the time. The teams we play are too good for us to be inconsistent.”
Not only is the team thinking about improvement, they say they still believe that they could reach a bowl game. They understand it will take one heck of a hot streak, but they aren’t giving up hope on this season.
“Obviously with our start, we’ve got to play better to get there, but I think it’s still very much realistic,” Willingham said. “If we can get hot, get on a streak here, beat some teams – and we’ve got some great teams on our schedule in front of us – then I think we’ll be bowl-worthy.”
Quarterback Isaiah Stanback vows that this season will not turn out the same way last year’s did.
“This team is good,” Stanback said. “It would be totally different if we thought we just got beat. We feel like we’ve been giving these games away. We’re not just saying that to make ourselves feel better. We turned the ball over against the top team we played so far. If we didn’t turn it over, it’s a different game. Once we eliminate that, we’ll be fine.”
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