Cal arrives in Seattle with shaky quarterback situation

SEATTLE – Joe Ayoob didn’t look much like a junior college player of the year in his debut for No. 16 California.

Still, coach Jeff Tedford has confidence in the junior quarterback, enough to name him the starter for today’s Pac-10 Conference opener against Washington.

“I’ve never had a worse day in any kind of sport in my life,” Ayoob said of his 0-for-10 performance last week against Sacramento State. “It was tough, but bad days, you get over them.”

The Bears will be attempting a rare feat – four straight wins over the Huskies. It’s happened only three times since the teams started playing regularly in 1915, the last coming from 1973-76. After that stretch, Washington won the next 19 meetings, until Tedford’s first year in 2002, when Cal beat the Huskies 34-27 in Seattle.

Ayoob transferred to Cal from City College of San Francisco, where he was the state junior college offensive player of the year last season. He battled with redshirt freshman Nate Longshore since last spring for the starting nod.

Longshore won the competition but broke his left ankle in the second quarter of last week’s 41-3 route of Sacramento State. Ayoob entered during the middle of a two-minute drill, but instead of showing the arm that completed 61 percent of his passes and threw for 3,679 yards and 35 touchdowns at CCSF last year, Ayoob stumbled badly.

He was later replaced by junior Steve Levy, but Levy was just 2 for 7 for 52 yards against the I-AA Hornets.

Shaky quarterback play most likely won’t cut it against a Washington defense that played three solid quarters against Air Force before letting an 11-point lead slip away in a 20-17 loss.

There are defensive concerns for the Huskies, which could benefit Ayoob. Defensive backs C.J. Wallace and Roy Lewis both were injured against the Falcons. Lewis is expected to play despite an arm injury, but Wallace’s concussion could keep him out, making a thin secondary even more vulnerable.

But, there is some good news for the Huskies: Coach Tyrone Willingham went undefeated (7-0) against California while coaching at Stanford.

Those wins came between 1995 and 2001, when the Bears’ were less than .500 all but one season.