Dawgs Dig Own Hole

Obviously, the Washington Huskies will go to any lengths to spite Washington State.

But even if it means spiting themselves?

Asked and answered here Saturday, when the Huskies turned a simple referendum on the quality of life without Brock Huard and Rashaan Shehee into an angst-soaked soul search into whether there’s any life left in them, period.

It wasn’t merely that they dropped a 31-28 shocker to Oregon, a team previously sliding down the bannister toward the Pac-10 cellar.

It was that their approach bordered on indifference.

That their remedies resembled retreat.

That their method of closing out what would have been an inspiring comeback was Charltonesque.

“When you lose a game the way we lost this one,” said linebacker Jerry Jensen, “it really sets you back.”

A timeout might be good right now - but wait! Jim Lambright doesn’t have any left!

So there is no postponing the showdown next Saturday at UCLA which - like Oregon - has had an extra week to prepare for UW. No delaying the Apple Cup gala against the Cougars, whose schedule has dealt them not just one faux bye (goodbye, Southwestern Louisiana) but two (hello, Stanford). No, the Huskies must beat both UCLA and WSU to play in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. They’ve made it that simple.

And compounded the stress by 10.

“We won’t have a chance,” acknowledged Lambright, “if we play like we did today.”

(As for Wazzu, well, the Cougs had all sorts of options until this happened. Suddenly they can’t freight enough good karma UCLA’s way because they’re desperate for the Pac-10 race to end in a three-way tie and desperate to avoid a dead heat with Arizona State.)

Talk of the Huskies running the table, however, must be salted with the other real possibility: that they could find themselves taking cover under it.

The handicap of going into battle without their quarterback (Huard, nursing a bum ankle) and running back (Shehee, a wounded knee) was exposed Saturday as being very real, though of equal concern to Lambright was how the Huskies misplaced the cure.

“When you’re trying to go with a couple of new starters,” he said, “you need to go out and support them and obviously we didn’t give them enough support today.”

For this, he took the fall - “This is a head coach’s loss” - but was only slightly convincing. The coaching staff had enough to handle trying to patch together a backfield and a plan; surely the players could have supplied the emotion.

But they didn’t - not for kickoff, anyway.

“We were flat,” conceded linebacker Lester Towns, “and there’s no explaining why.”

There is only acknowledging that they sleepwalked into a 24-3 crevasse. UW’s offensive line couldn’t punch out any space for Shehee’s relief, Maurice Shaw and Jason Harris. The defense had no siccum and no solutions, especially for Oregon quarterback Akili Smith, who was downright Leafian in his refusal to be tackled.

“I was so frustrated,” admitted defensive end Jason Chorak. “That kid is a tremendous athlete. You think you have him and then he puts on the brakes and you fly by, or half of his body goes one way and half goes the other, or he spins on you and goes the other direction for 15 (yards).”

The Ducks were in similar mutter about Marques Tuiasosopo, Huard’s freshman replacement - in many respects, the most remarkable commodity on this team. Yes, he missed a couple of crucial reads that would have resulted in first-half touchdowns. But he also had a drop by Jerome Pathon in the end zone, and made the bulk of UW’s yardage on his own guts and guile.

The final count - Tuiasosopo 356 yards, the rest of the Huskies 57 - was symptomatic of the problem.

Unable to run without Shehee, the Huskies simply stopped trying in the second quarter - other than quarterback keepers. And apparently skittish without Huard, they devoted almost all their passing energies to the long ball.

Certainly it was entertaining. Often it worked. A third of Tuiasosopo’s 15 completions went for 28 yards or more. Alas, more than half of his 15 misfires were wildly overthrown bombs, series killers.

And yet still the Huskies had the game won, mounting a methodical comeback behind some stifling second-half defense and Tuiasosopo’s many gifts. The kid ran a textbook option to a 42-yard touchdown; later, he threw a textbook missile to freshman blur Ja’Warren Hooker for the go-ahead touchdown.

Then the darnedest thing happened. The defense rested. The Ducks completed two long passes on third down, and the Husky Stadium horseshoe - wall-to-wall green and gold - went nuts.

Two and a half minutes remained, but Washington couldn’t stretch it. The Huskies had burned all three timeouts - one before going for two after a touchdown, one on a second-and-goal from the Oregon 1 and the last just before Oregon’s winning touchdown, on third-and-20.

“That was definitely a plus for us, to have that timeout,” said Smith.

“I don’t think the timeouts were any big deal at the end,” sniffed Lambright, who apparently didn’t notice that Oregon had UW’s final two plays defensed impeccably.

Well, everything’s a big deal now.

The Huskies will have Huard back next week, but the player they desperately need is Shehee - who is unlikely to return even for the Apple Cup. If you can’t run in November, you can’t win.

Beyond that, whatever else the Huskies need can be found within.

“We still control our own destiny,” said Chorak. “We just need to get that fire back in our eyes. If this isn’t a wakeup call, something’s wrong.”

Something’s wrong if you need a wakeup call, but at least the Huskies had the leeway for such a mistake.

No more.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: The race to the Rose Bowl

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review