Not as Bad as I thought

Last night the University of Washington Huskies lost badly to the #10 Stanford Cardinal.

It could have been worse.

We didn't know until the game was about to start if the Huskies' starting quarterback, Jake Browning, was going to play. Turned out he wasn't, having suffered a shoulder injury last week in the Huskies' loss to Oregon. So backup quarterback K.J. Carta-Samuels played. The only experience Husky fans had with Carta-Samuels was when he threw a game-ending interception in that loss to Oregon.

So I was expecting a blow out. But it wasn't. Despite Carta-Samuels's lackluster play (he connected on only 9 of 21 passes) the Husky defense was able to keep the Stanford from running away with the game. Also, on one series, freshman running back Myles Gaskin carried the ball down the field and made a touchdown. Gaskin is going to be a great player the next couple of years (until he leaves after his junior year for the NFL).

The game started at 7:30 PM and I had a busy day. At 10:00 PM, Stanford scored their second touchdown of the third quarter and the Husky offense looked defeated. I went to bed, recording the rest of the game in case a miracle happened. It didn't. That was, however, the Carndinal's last touchdown of the game and the Huskies manged another touchdown, so the score ended up being 14-31. Not exactly a blow out but not very good.

And this lost gives the Huskies a losing record this year at 3-4 (1-3 in conference). They are in 5th places in the Pac-12 North (a 6-team division). I'm starting to worry about the Apple Cup game against Washington State.

I've said this before (probably) and I'll say it again: The Huskies are a very young team with a lot of freshmen. Head Coach Chris Petersen has said that getting the program on track like his Boise State team was would take 2 - 3 years. And this might be the first year despite Petersen being the head coach last year as then he was pretty much running ex-head coach Steve Sarkesian's team. Husky fans hearken back to halcyon days of national championships (and beating the damn Oregon Ducks). But that was 25 years ago. Since then the team had its 2008 nadir with a 0-12 season. Yes, we're still rebuilding, and still making the team great again. I just hope Petersen is right that he can do at Washington what he did at Boise State.