Huskies take dive
SEATTLE – Well, at least it didn’t rain.
Of course, maybe some wet weather would have given Washington an excuse as to why, when facing a winless Stanford team that was a 19-point underdog and hadn’t threatened to a win a game this season, the Huskies still found a way to play their worst game of this season and saw any hope of a bowl game disappear with a 20-3 loss to the Cardinal Saturday at Husky Stadium.
The loss was the sixth in a row for Washington, which is 4-7 overall and 2-6 in the Pacific-10 and will play out its season next week against Washington State. Stanford is 1-9, 1-6.
Head coach Tyrone Willingham said the loss is a step back for a program that started the season 4-1 but is a game out of last place in the Pac-10.
“I would say yes, it is, it is a step back,” Willingham said. “I don’t think you can ever count on winning any ballgame, that’s why you play it. But at the same time, I felt like this was a ballgame we could win and could position ourselves to go into next week and still have a chance at our goal for the season. And we didn’t respond. We didn’t get it done.”
The loss was all the more disturbing because of what was at stake for Washington. The Huskies still had a shot at a bowl game if they won their final two contests. Instead, a once promising season reached its lowest point against a team that hadn’t even led in a game since Sept. 9.
The offense was again the culprit, as Washington could find no way of moving the ball against a Cardinal defense that was last in the Pac-10 in scoring defense and total defense.
Stanford came into the game allowing 35.3 points and 417.8 yards a game. Washington managed a season-low 122 yards, including 39 rushing yards against a team allowing 239.1 yards a game on the ground.
The blocking up front was again shoddy, passing was inaccurate (Carl Bonnell and Johnny DuRocher combined to go 11 for 44) and passes that were on the mark were dropped.
“We had a good week of practice,” offensive coordinator Tim Lappano said. “That’s what’s really disappointing. When you come out on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and they were fired up and they played hard and they executed. To come out the way we did against Stanford, I don’t understand it.”
More shocking was that the Huskies continually got good field position, especially early. The worst spot Washington started with on its first three drives was its 48, but it punted twice and got a 28-yard field goal by Michael Braunstein.
On their fifth drive, the Huskies started at the Stanford 23, but Louis Rankin was stopped for no gain, DuRocher threw incomplete and Sonny Shackelford was called for offensive pass interference, and UW was forced to punt.
Washington had to punt eight times and also had three interceptions.
“That was not quite what we expected,” said Bonnell, who was 10 for 35 for 118 yards and missed time with a quadriceps bruise. “They came out, started off pretty hard and hit us around a little bit. Scoring only three points in the first half really hurt us. We didn’t really put our foot down.”
“Our defense really stopped the run and controlled the pass and did an outstanding job,” Stanford coach Walt Harris said.
Despite the offensive problems, Washington’s defense kept its team in the game against the nation’s lowest-scoring offense. The Cardinal were averaging nine points a game and had scored more than 10 once all season. Stanford didn’t manage a first down until there was 12:10 left in the second quarter, and the Husky defense held the Cardinal to 226 yards of offense, including just 20 on the ground.
But just before halftime, quarterback T.C. Ostrander connected with Richard Sherman on passes of 41 and 34 yards, setting up a 29-yard field goal by Aaron Zagory that sent the teams into halftime tied.