SEATTLE – All parties insist that practices this week were nothing out of the ordinary following Monday’s jolting announcement that Keith Gilbertson would step down as head coach following the season’s conclusion.
Asked what he expected out of his 1-7 team today against 1-7 Arizona, Gilbertson gave the predictable answer.
“I expect them to play hard,” he said.
Given all that’s happened to this team in 2004, it’s a credit to the Huskies that they’ve always played hard. And no indications this week say it’ll be any different today.
Whether that is enough, however, even against the struggling Wildcats, is debatable.
The offense has been non-existent. The Huskies have not scored a touchdown since Oct. 16 against Oregon State, a total of 13 quarters. Once a passing force, Washington ranks dead last out of 117 Division I teams in the nation in passing efficiency. The Huskies have lost 30 turnovers, last in the Pacific-10 Conference, five worse than No. 8, Washington State.
If anyone needs something good to happen to him, it’s quarterback Casey Paus.
In the interest of continuity, Gilbertson said before last week’s game at Oregon that Paus would be the starter for the rest of the season. He promptly threw four interceptions and lost a fumble against the Ducks in a 31-6 defeat. He’s completing just 43 percent of his passes and has a 10-3 interception-touchdown-pass ratio.
So why send Paus out again? Currently, he’s the best the Huskies have.
Gilbertson said Paus has the greatest knowledge of the offense. So simplified was the offense when Isaiah Stanback and Carl Bonnell entered the game that the Huskies became too vanilla.
“We can’t get any simpler,” Gilbertson said at the time. “We’re not fooling anybody now as it is.”
Neither, it seems, are the Wildcats.
First-year coach Mike Stoops replaced starting quarterback Kris Heavner with redshirt freshman Richard Kovalcheck two weeks ago. Kovalcheck responded by throwing for 235 yards last week in a 28-14 loss to Oregon State.
One of the factors in replacing Heavner has been his mistakes, especially in the first quarter. The Wildcats have been outscored 61-13 in the opening quarter. In the last four games, Arizona has been outscored 79-3 in the first two periods.
Arizona has scored on its first possession just once in eight games, and that came in the opener against Northern Arizona.
So the battle for the bottom of the Pac-10 is between two teams that are mirror images of each other.
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