A road game UW doesn’t mind

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The bad news for Washington when it plays Oregon State tonight? The Huskies have lost three straight to the Beavers after winning 25 of the previous 27 meetings.

The good news? The Huskies finally get to play OSU at Reser Stadium. A scheduling quirk led to three straight meetings between the Northwest rivals at Husky Stadium, and the Beavers won each of those meetings.

“Can we move it?” Oregon State coach Mike Riley joked earlier this week. “Is it too late? We’ll make the trip up if it’s OK with everybody.”

So now that the Huskies are back at Reser Stadium, a place they own a 15-4 record, will they end their three-game losing streak to the Beavers? Perhaps no aspect of the game will go further to answer that question than the battle between Oregon State’s run defense and Washington’s run offense.

Oregon State ranks second in the nation in run defense, allowing just 59.6 yards per game. The Beavers have held opponents to 1.8 yards per carry, the lowest average in the nation.

The Huskies, meanwhile, counter with the Pac-10’s No. 2 rushing offense (192.8 yards per game). A unit that has an improving tailback in Louis Rankin, and one of the nation’s best running quarterbacks in Jake Locker. Last week, the Huskies piled up 388 rushing yards in a win over Stanford, and Locker and Rankin are on pace to become just the fourth 1,000-yard tandem in Pac-10 history.

“They’re going to stretch us all the way with the strength against strength factor,” Riley said. “Obviously, with the day that they had running the ball (against Stanford) and with the ability that Jake has. … He is definitely an exciting, talented, tough player. If you don’t have to play against him, he is a lot of fun to watch. A really good addition to the program. One of those guys that everybody in the conference has a ton of respect for. That’s going to stretch everybody in that regard. It is really strength against strength in that way.”

Recent Oregon State teams have made strong run defense and a physical run offense their identity. Something the Huskies have noticed in recent meetings.

“The last couple of years that we’ve played them, they’ve been one team that’s out-physicalled us,” said Washington center Juan Garcia. “So one thing we’ve got to do is go out there and be physical.”

So is football similar to baseball, where good pitching is said to beat good hitting? Does good defense beat a good offense?

“Some weeks it might, but this will be an interesting one,” said Washington coach Tyrone Willingham. “They do a lot of things that I think are a little bit different from traditional in terms of how they play the front, so it’s going to be interesting to see if we can penetrate that. And if we can crack it, then it may not be one of those days that the defense has the upper hand.”

If Oregon State’s defense does gain the upper hand and slows down the Huskies, and if the Beavers’ backup quarterback-led offense can’t move the ball effectively, tonight’s game could come down to a battle of special teams, which could be bad for the Huskies for a couple of reasons.

For one, there is the field position the Huskies are giving away on kickoffs. The Huskies are last in the Pac-10 in kickoff coverage, and if that trend continues, the Beavers won’t have to gain a whole lot of yards to get into field goal range.

Once in field-goal range, the Beavers and kicker Alexis Serna are all about punishing the Huskies. In his three games against Washington, Serna is 13 of 13 on field-goal attempts, including a six-field-goal effort in 2005 in which he accounted for all of Oregon State’s points in an 18-10 victory.

“It’s unbelievable,” Willingham said of Serna’s success against Washington. “You think you play a darn good football game against them two years ago, and his six field goals beat you. … It’s something in purple or something, it makes him accurate. When you limit a team just to field goals, you think you have a chance to win, but we haven’t been successful doing it.”

So if the Huskies can’t stop Serna, they’ll have to hope their run offense is better than Oregon State’s run defense tonight. Otherwise, they’ll have to take their chances with the kicker, which hasn’t exactly worked in recent years.