Following an enormously disappointing OT loss at Notre Dame last weekend, the Huskies come home to take on Pac-10 rival Arizona in the FSN primetime game this evening.
Much of the post-game attention last week focused on a couple of calls that could politely be labeled “questionable,” but despite the officiating, U-dub had every opportunity to win the game —10 plays with goal-to-go from the 3 or better—and came away with only 3 points.
Bitch about whatever call you want (I’m looking in your direction Seattle Times), but this Husky fan says we did it to ourselves. Beyond terrible short-yardage execution, Sarkisian’s failure to: A) kick the field goal to go up 8 points on the first stuff and B) risk a timeout to challenge the 2-point conversion that clearly looked to have been stopped and would have won the game right there were both pretty bad decisions.
But enough of that. Let’s just hope the emotional hangover of such a devastating loss doesn’t carry into this week, as the Huskies will have all they can handle with an underrated Arizona Wildcats squad.
On paper, the Arizona unit owns advantages on both sides of the ball. Arizona’s offensive attack is solid on the ground and through the air, with stud RB Nic Grigsby and the emergence of QB Nick Foles. The Wildcats are averaging a robust 7.1 yard per carry, and could quite possibly run the ball down the Huskies’ throats all day against a weak UW stop unit.
Besides home field, the Huskies hope is their offense, a unit which is slightly better than average at about 5.5 yards per play moving the ball reasonably well with Polk and their newly-energized ground attack. Unfortunately the Arizona defense has been stingy, yielding just 4.6 yards per play.
The Huskies will need to have some key defensive stops and win the turnover battle—as they did in their upset win vs. USC—or this could be a long day. Expect a reasonably high-scoring contest.
Trash me as a Husky hater if you want, and I hope I’m wrong on this, but the prediction: Arizona 38, Washington 27.
