Hardly anything went well for the Huskies in this one, a 44-10 loss to kick off the season.
Offense? Bad. Defense? Ok at times, but way too many big plays. Special teams? Lots of mistakes.
About the only good news is that there were no major injuries reported by Tyrone Willingham. Jake Locker said his hamstring felt fine after the game, and that he didn’t think it affected him in the game. Oregon’s defense on the other hand certainly did.
Here’s a few notable quotes from the players and coaches. Check our website in the morning for a little more coverage than what you’ll see in the paper. We’ll also have more on the game in Monday’s paper.
Tyrone Willingham:
“Obviously the outcome was one that we didn’t anticipate. We felt coming in that we’d fare much better than this and that we’d have a chance to win this football game, even in this difficult environment. The disappoint thing, for one is we couldn’t run the football as we thought we would be able to run the football. And defensively we gave up a few too many big plays that didn’t allow us to keep their offense in check. We thought early in the ball game we got a little better on both sides once we kind of settled into the pace of the ball game. But obviously in the second half we couldn’t maintain that and they were able to pull away from us.”
Jake Locker on what they need to do to bounce back?
“This is a good group of guys and I think they’re all pretty upset about it and they understand that we didn’t play nearly as well as we can. We’ll probably get together and just make sure that point is reiterated. We’re not good enough to come in and just show up and beat teams. We’ve got to play as well as we can to win games. Nobody is a pushover in this league. They played a great game tonight and we didn’t come to play.”
Tim Lappano on the team’s inability to run the ball (they averaged 2.2 yards per):
“We didn’t see this coming. We knew they were going to load the box, but we still thought we’d be able to knock them off the ball and run the football.”
“We weren’t able to run the football really in any way shape or form whether we spread them or tried to play with a power set, we couldn’t run the football.”
“I don’t know what it was. It didn’t look like there was a lot of room, but until I see it [on film], I don’t really know. But it looked pretty stuffed up in there. It didn’t seem like there was anywhere to go.”
New defensive coordinator Ed Donatell put a lot of the defensive problems on himself, though clearly there were some missed tackles when the right plays were called.
“I think [the Ducks] are very good, but I’m disappointed in myself,” he said. “I think I could have matched it up better. I think I can coach better in the game. I don’t put that on anybody but myself.”
All in all, a pretty bad start.
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