By John Sleeper
Herald Writer
Two schools of thought seem to weigh in for today’s Washington-Miami tilt.
1) The 12th-ranked Huskies, 26-point underdogs, have little to lose. They have a Holiday Bowl bid in hand. They have undeniable talent in their passing game. If they can keep the game close going into the fourth quarter, they know what they can do. They have won 13 games under coach Rick Neuheisel after being behind in the fourth quarter.
“If we stay in the ballgame, we have a great deal of experience in close games,” Neuheisel said. “Hopefully, we can parlay that experience and manufacture a chance to win. We’re not going down there to get our season over with.”
2) The top-ranked Hurricanes, ticked off that the Huskies knocked them out of the BSC title game last year, take it out on Washington this time in the Orange Bowl.
Since the 34-29 loss to the Huskies, the Hurricanes have won 19 straight and again are in a position for a national championship. The memory of 2000 still hurts, and the Hurricanes have talked about payback the entire week.
“It was an eye-opener for us,” offensive tackle Joaquin Gonzalez said. “If we had two more minutes in that game, we probably would have won it. But we don’t need our eyes opened any more.”
In a thunderous Husky Stadium that day, the Hurricanes seemed rattled early. Washington linebacker Tyler Krambrink separated Santana Moss from the ball on a punt return and the Huskies turned it into a touchdown.
The Huskies forced quarterback Ken Dorsey to fumble late in the half and turned that into another touchdown and a 21-3 halftime lead.
Through the deafening wave of sound, Dorsey had trouble calling audibles, fumbled twice, tripped and fell over his own feet twice, messed up a snap and was sacked four times.
Miami has been pointing to this game ever since.
“I remember that game like it was yesterday,” Miami center Brett Romberg said. “It was that first big game for a lot of us and we really didn’t know how to handle it. We never realized that we just needed to go out and play football. It was just panic. Everybody was trying to do way more than what they should have been doing.”
So this is what the Huskies are up against. Miami not only is gunning for a national title, it also has a need to pay back the team it believes knocked it out of one last year.
Yet, even so, the Hurricanes lobbied all they could to crash the BCS title game.
“We certainly understood their arguments to try to position themselves for a national championship, given the way they played toward the end,” Neuheisel said. “When (then-coach) Butch Davis would talk about why he thought Miami deserved to be in the national championship game against Oklahoma, he would always say, ‘We beat Florida State.’ The only thing we added to the statement was ‘And?’”
For a non-conference game, a game to be played almost solely for the entertainment of fans around the nation, a game with a 26-point spread, this is capturing a lot of attention.
“It doesn’t get any bigger than this, a game against the No. 1 team in the Orange Bowl on a national stage,” UW quarterback Cody Pickett said. “This is what you come to Washington for.”
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