EUGENE, Ore. – It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?
All the Washington Huskies’ talk about a bowl game. The 4-1 start that brought back, albeit briefly, excitement in the UW football program. Suddenly, we were allowed to dream realistically that torturous losing streaks and horrible football were done at Washington.
But nooooo …
Washington’s 34-14 defeat Saturday to Oregon at Autzen Stadium all but assured the Huskies’ third straight season of watching bowl games instead of playing in them.
Victories against Stanford and Washington State would leave Washington bowl-eligible at 6-6, but even that guarantees nothing in the way of postseason play.
A combination of injuries, especially to starting quarterback Isaiah Stanback, a lack of Division I talent and an environment of losing caught up with Washington since its 4-1 start. The Huskies almost beat top-10 teams California and USC. They grittily came from behind and caught ASU, forcing the Sun Devils into overtime, but lost.
It all served to fuel suspicion that the Huskies came close to beating teams better than they are because of their opponents’ vast overconfidence. San Jose State, Fresno State and Arizona are simply terrible. Oklahoma woke up after intermission. UCLA lost consciousness in the second half at Husky Stadium and badly lost a game it had no business of losing.
When Washington faced a ready opponent, one that took it seriously (see Oregon and Oregon State), the Huskies didn’t have a chance.
The talent simply isn’t there. And after losing four straight, three on the last play of the game, the confidence rotted away.
The expressed hope and expectations many had about Washington was unfair to a team woefully unprepared to win consistently. It was a wonderful fairy tale, one that takes advantage of our natural love of the underdog.
But the hopes fell on a team without enough talented players. Yes, the players professed self-confidence, but they’d endured too many blowout losses in the past three years to back it up. They were just fragile enough to lose.
This isn’t an indictment of any player on the roster. After all, to demand feats from a team simply incapable of boosting its level of play accordingly isn’t its fault. Rather, this is a group that, in winning a minimum of four games in 2006, exceeded all reasonable goals.
Remember, these Huskies largely are at Washington because of the hangover brought on by three coaching regimes since 2002. The fiasco that involved Rick Neuheisel, Barbara Hedges and others scared off the usual high-quality of recruits Washington could reasonably expect to nab under normal circumstances.
Instead, said recruits went to Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State and other schools in the Pac-10.
Many love to blame Keith Gilbertson with the current state of Washington football, but that’s unfair as well. Gilbertson dreamed of getting the UW head-coaching job, but NOT under the circumstances in which he was hired. He served and endured out of loyalty of a school he loved since childhood.
A check of next season’s schedule won’t encourage even the most lunatic Husky fan of a 2007 bowl game, either. After the opener at Syracuse, Washington plays host to Boise State and Ohio State, travels to UCLA, then comes home for games against USC and Cal.
That’s just not a pretty sight for anyone.
The solution: Coach Tyrone Willingham has to wait for the roster to age and his staff has to recruit the daylights out of the opposition the next several years. While the coaching staff has done a marvelous job of establishing a positive-belief system in the program, those upperclassmen left over from the Gilbertson years lost too many games to buy into it enough for it to endure when the season went south. They have to graduate, to move on and leave room for more talented players.
None of this is their fault. They’re only guilty of being human. How could doubt not creep in after what they’ve been through?
Willingham has laid the foundation for the future. All he needs is talent on the roster. And building talent on a roster takes time.
It was too early to expect a bowl game this season and it will be too early next year.
It’s up to athletic director Todd Turner and influential boosters to stay out of Willingham’s way and allow him to do the job he was hired to do.
He’s well on his way.
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