Huskies looking for 5-1 start vs. Colorado
SEATTLE – Game day couldn’t come soon enough for the Washington Huskies.
Having put together one of the best starts of the past decade, the University of Washington football team (4-1 overall, 2-0 Pacific-12 Conference) spent last Saturday impatiently playing the parts of couch potatoes.
“It feels good to be out here playing football,” junior safety Justin Glenn said when the Huskies returned to the practice field earlier this week. “It didn’t feel right last Saturday just sitting there watching games.”
Today, the UW steam engine gets to continue on its path. The Huskies host a struggling Colorado team (1-5, 0-2) on an afternoon when UW is hoping to go to 5-1 for the first time since 2001. Washington has started 5-1 or better only five times since the unbeaten 1991 season 30 years ago.
But the Huskies know they’re not anywhere near the level of some past UW juggernauts yet.
They scoff at talk that they might be overlooking the Buffaloes today, even though UW is considered a heavy favorite.
Huskies running back Chris Polk said the Buffaloes’ record is misleading.
“If they had a couple snaps go their way, they could’ve had the same record as us,” Polk said this week. “And we know that if we had a couple of snaps not go our way, we could have had the same record as them.
“We went into the bye week on a high note, but we still have a lot of room for improvement. We still haven’t played to our full potential.”
The Huskies, who are just outside of the Top 25 in both major polls, will face two top-10 teams in the next three weeks. So UW had better hit its full stride soon if the Huskies are going to truly challenge for a Pac-12 North Division title.
“We knew coming into the season that (the schedule) was going to get harder and harder,” Polk said. “Each week, it gets way harder because as we start to meet our potential, people want to bring us down off that pedestal. We’ve just got to treat every game like a bowl game, because everybody’s going to try to take it to us.”