Tonight makes four losses in a row for the Huskies, and all four games felt like ones they could have won at halftime. On this night, ASU outscored the Huskies 21-0 in the third quarter on the way to a 44-20 win. The Huskies have now been outscored 56-0 in the third quarter during their four-game losing streak.
“It’s obviously a difficult thing to talk about, because I don’t have a solution to it,” said Tyrone Willingham. “I thought we were poised and in position to play a really good third quarter, and we stretched ourselves in some areas and didn’t make plays, then had some mental mistakes and other things happen, and I really don’t know how to explain it. But we’re going to find something, we’ll find some way to get it done, get it solved.”
The Huskies again fell victim to big runs, as the Sun Devils had touchdown runs of 57 and 76 yards in the third quarter. Senior linebacker Dan Howell missed a tackle on the first run. He took responsibility on that play, and said he had other plays he didn’t make that hurt the team.
“I had a lot of opportunities that I didn’t make,” he said. “I put a lot of our loss personally on myself.”
Talking to player and coaches after the game, one of the words that kept coming up is focus. The Huskies seem to think they lost it in the third quarter, and it’s hard to argue with that. As far as confidence, the Huskies say they still have it, but it’s going to be hard to rebound from this loss heading into a game with Oregon, which looked very good today in beating WSU.
One of the few bright spots was the first half of tailback Louis Rankin, who ran as well as he has since Washington’s season-opening win at Syracuse. Rankin 68 yards on seven carries in the first half, but had only four carries the rest of the night for 12 yards. Rankin also had 147 yards of kick returns.
He wouldn’t say it, Rankin might have been upset about his lack of second-half carries. If he was mad about it, Rankin was smart enough to muzzle himself on the topic.
“I’m not going to say anything about what happened in the second half,” he said. “I don’t have anything to say about that.”
— The Huskies had a couple of injuries today. Offensive tackle Ben Ossai left the game with an ankle injury, and receiver Quintin Daniels left with a knee sprain. Willingham said the severity of both injuries is still unknown. Daniel Te’o-Nesheim also missed some time with cramps, but returned.
—When asked about Mason Foster starting over E.J. Savannah and Jordan White-Frisbee starting over Casey Bulyca, Tyrone Willingham said both were for disciplinary reasons.
—Asked about his third-quarter fumble on a sack, Jake Locker said he was trying to pull the ball in and lost it. It almost looked on replays like he was trying to get rid of the ball and toss it to a teammate, but he said that wasn’t the case.
And finally, for a little bit of levity on a sad night for Husky fans, I’ll leave you with this quote from ASU tailback Keegan Herring. Herring rushed for 119 yards on 10 carries, including a 76-yard score. He had this to say when asked about his offensive line:
“Oh man, I think I might marry one of them to tell you the truth. They are doing great out there.”
Since this game was so late and you won’t have quotes in Sunday’s paper, we’ll have a little extra coverage on Monday in the Herald.
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