TUCSON, Ariz. It’s the theme to the Washington football season so far: “Not pretty, but we’ll take it.”
The Huskies offense played well for about one quarter, but the defense made sure it was good enough as Washington defeated Arizona 21-10 Saturday in front of 55,409 fans at Arizona Stadium.
The win improves the Huskies to 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the Pacific-10. Two more wins and Washington will be bowl-eligible, and that seems a distinct possibility with home games still to come against Stanford (0-4), Oregon State (2-2) and Arizona State (3-2), who are a combined 0-6 in the Pac-10. The Huskies have now won three games in a row for the first time since early in the 2003 season. They haven’t had a four-game winning streak since starting the 2001 season 4-0.
“I don’t think I’ve coached a football game that hasn’t been up and down,” Washington coach Tyrone Willingham said. “Even on your best days there’s something that doesn’t go your way and you have to rise from the depths again. Our guys continue to fight and hopefully that’s a characteristic of our football team.”
While the Husky offense sputtered for much of the game – getting just five first downs and no points in the second half – the defense bent, but rarely broke. Faced with a 21-3 deficit at halftime, Arizona spent most of the second half passing, and sophomore Willie Tuitama moved the offense, going 14-for-25 after halftime for 186 yards. But the UW defense allowed just one touchdown, and have allowed opponents to reach the end zone only once since the 11:48 mark of the second quarter of the UCLA game. It finished with 11 tackles for loss and six sacks in its most aggressive game of the season.
“I thought we could get to (Tuitama),” defensive coordinator Kent Baer said. “I thought we could cover them. We mixed it up. I went through my call sheet and I don’t think there was anything left, and it was a long call sheet. We gave them a lot of looks.”
“We wanted to do something to try to not let the quarterback get into a rhythm,” said linebacker Scott White, who had 10 tackles, three for loss, and two sacks. “If he got into a rhythm we were going to be in trouble.”
Isaiah Stanback was dynamic for about one quarter, but he and the entire offense struggled for the rest of the game. After missing on his first four passes, Stanback completed 11 in a row for 273 yards between the end of the first quarter and start of the third. In that time, he had touchdown passes to Sonny Shackelford and Quintin Daniels and set up a scoring run by Kenny James. But outside of that 11-for-11 streak, Stanback was 3-for-14 for 20 yards. He left the game late in the fourth quarter after running for 18 yards with what appeared to be a left thigh bruise and was replaced by Carl Bonnell, but he returned later.
Fortunately for the offense, the defense handled Arizona’s running game and the Wildcats hurt themselves with eight penalties for 78 yards. White led the way, never more so than midway through the third quarter.
The Wildcats drove 76 yards to the UW 4 with the Huskies leading 21-3. On first down, White stuffed running back Chris Jennings for a loss of 4. On the next play, White burst through to sack Willie Tuitama for a loss of 16, his second sack of the game. Syndric Steptoe dropped a potential touchdown on the next play and Nick Folk missed a 41-yard field goal.
In the fourth quarter, White tipped a Tuitama pass that Dashon Goldson picked off.
“I just executed doing what I was coached to do,” White said. “Coach Baer called a great game. It seemed like every time they did something we had the perfect call for it.”
Washington held Arizona to minus-7 yards rushing, though much of that was due to sacks. Arizona’s running backs managed 50 yards on 64 carries. The Huskies also knocked down three passes.
“What was impressive the most was we kept them off the scoreboard,” Willingham said. “It was a pretty good day for our defense.”
When Washington’s offense was working, it was working with the deep ball. Stanback had a 55-yard touchdown pass to Quintin Daniels, who made a nifty move to shake a defender and get in with 22 seconds left in the first half; a 50-yard pass to Sonny Shackelford; and a 44-yarder to Anthony Russo. Stanback also scored on a halfback pass, catching a screen from Kenny James and running in from 23 yards out only to have it called back on a clipping penalty.
“They were playing man-to-man against us, they weren’t respecting us as receivers, and we told the coaches we have to go deep,” said Shackelford, who had five catches for 105 yards.
“We felt like they would try to sit on some of our routes that were intermediate depth and the only way to stop that was to try to go by them,” Willingham said.
Arizona actually took the lead first on a 52-yard field goal by Nick Folk with 9:51 to play in the first half. But Washington came alive on the next drive as Stanback found Shackelford wide-open for 50 yards, then later found Shackelford on a 16-yard gain to the 10. Three plays later, the duo hooked up for the third time on the drive, with Stanback connecting on a 3-yard comeback to Shackelford to give the Huskies the lead. It was the fourth-straight game that Shackelford had a touchdown catch, and he now has five this season.
After a three-and-out, Stanback set up the second UW touchdown with a 44-yard bomb to Russo that went to the 8. Two plays later, James ran four yards up the middle for a 14-3 lead. The defense again held, giving the Huskies the ball with 54 seconds remaining in the half, but they didn’t need that long. Stanback connected with Shackelford for 25 yards, then rolled to his right and hit Daniels wide open around the 25. Daniels shook one defender and ran in down the right sideline and into the end zone for a 21-3 Husky lead.
For the half, the Huskies outgained Arizona 328-143 despite the Wildcats holding the ball for twice as long. Washington also held Arizona 21 yards rushing on 16 attempts and 1-for-8 on third down. For the game, Arizona was 1-for-14.
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