Shehee’s Ready For His Last Stand Star Runner Back In Shape For Huskies In Aloha Bowl

As the sun darts between the clouds and somewhere on the island there is a rainbow, Rashaan Shehee plants a foot into the artificial turf at Aloha Stadium and makes a surgical cut through the defense.

“I’m making some moves I didn’t even know I had,” he said after practice for Thursday’s Aloha Bowl. “Biggest game of my life; I have to be ready.”

Five years at Washington is drawing to a close for Shehee, who remains an unfinished portrait, with moves not yet seen or even conjured, a running back who never had a full season, who left you wondering if he might not have been the best of all of them if only he had had the chance.

One thing we know for sure. The loss of no player in recent history has meant as much as Shehee’s inability to play in the final three games this season, when the running game went from 200 yards a game to 96, when defenses began blitzing quarterback Brock Huard without regard to the run, when the Huskies lost three straight.

Shehee labels himself 95 percent recovered from a partial ligament tear in his knee suffered early in the USC game Nov. 1. He wants badly to be productive against Michigan State, to gain over 100 yards as he has done nine times in his career, games in which the Huskies have won eight.

But he wants to do it not to prove something to the NFL, or even to underscore what might have been in his career. As a senior, and captain, he just wants to help his team win a football game.

Shehee ranks eighth on the all-time UW list in rushing yardage and fifth in touchdowns by a running back even though, for a variety of reasons and injuries, he started only 18 games in four seasons.

“My father told me college would be the best days of by life, and he was right,” Shehee said. “I wouldn’t trade what’s happened for anything. I’ve had ups and downs, but everything that has happened has helped prepare me for life.”

One year, he missed most of a season after injuring his foot at an off-campus party; the next year, he was elected captain by his teammates. One year, he replaced star running back Leon Neal, the next year Corey Dillon replaced him.

He will graduate with a degree in sociology, working with kids after, of course, he works in the NFL.

“They can think of me as injury prone,” he said, “but the only games I’ve missed because of a football injury are the last three, and now I’m back.”

Shehee said he hears talk about being a third or fourth-round draft choice. He knows what talk does; he saw it keep Dillon from being a first-round pick last season.

“I know I’ll move up at the combine (workout),” he said, “because that is a numbers game and I have the numbers.”

Shehee doesn’t gloat, he just knows what he can do when measured against others.

The scores he achieves at the combine might not only show what kind of career he could have had at Washington, but they could give a glimpse of what is in store for him.

“They ask you to bench press 225 pounds as many times as you can,” Shehee said.

“Corey did it 17 times and they thought he was strong; I warm up at 20 and will probably do 25 or 26.

“I will run a 4.3 or 4.4 40 and I will vertical jump 40 inches. I know I will.”

Rick Huegli has been the strength coach at Washington for 17 years. He said no athlete at Washington, not even basketball star Dion Brown, has had the vertical jump of Shehee.

“Rashaan might be the best athlete we’ve had at the university since I’ve been here,” Huegli said.

Shehee was a national-class swimmer as a teenager. He played Jacque Vaughn, the former Kansas point guard now with the Utah Jazz, to a standstill in high-school basketball and turned down scholarships to play basketball at almost every Pacific-10 Conference school, including Washington.

He gained 171 yards against Notre Dame in his first college start. He gained 212 yards against Washington State the final game of his sophomore year. He was on a string of 100-plus games - 146 against Arizona State, 124 against Cal, 136 against Arizona, and 169 against Oregon State - before he was injured this season against USC.

He was the first-team all conference running back in 1997 even though he played only four full conference games. Even though Skip Hicks, Saladin McCullough and Michael Black gained more yards.

Coaches around the league know what he was. And what he might have been.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Aloha Bowl Washington vs. Michigan State, Thursday at 12:30 p.m., ABC