The Washington faithful were celebrating almost as much as the Washington State faithful tonight. The Cougars took the Oregon Ducks out of the Pac-12 North race, and put the Huskies back in charge of their own destiny.
Oregon found out the hard way what day it is if you’re on the road playing a good team who had two weeks to prepare.
The Cougars jumped on Oregon like a hobo jumping on a bologne samich (just try to understand my personal vernacular here). Now, Washington has an opportunity to still get to the Rose Bowl — which would be a huge feat considering the injury problems they’ve had this year.
Forget all the biases out there; the Pac-12 is a tough conference. This season has a long ways to go and there’s a lot of good football being played this side of the continent.
Now, Washington State has to travel to Stanford next week, and also has to face Colorado in Boulder. The Huskies already beat Colorado and they get Stanford at home. So they control their own destiny.
As low as this team was after losing a heartbreaker to Oregon last weekend, right now they are even higher than they were after beating Colorado today. But the Huskies need to focus on themselves and themselves only. They don’t need to worry about other teams.
They’ve beaten the two of the top three teams out of the South division, and Utah is taking it to USC as we speak.
Another team that’s on the rise right now is UCLA, and the Huskies have them in the rear view mirror too now. So the biggest challenges left on the schedule are Stanford (home) and (if they keep winning) the Cougars (at Pullman).
Of course, Cal is no gimme either (consider Purdue), and anything is possible on any given Saturday in this game — but the Huskies seemed to have looked like they would underachieve ths season, and yet here they are: The top team in the North (and best Pac-12 record, overall).
So tighten up those chin straps — it’s going to be a crazy fourth quarter in the 2018 Husky Football season.
And how cool would it be to get back to the Rose Bowl? Sure, the playoff is out for this season, but it will be back — as long as Chris Petersen is the head coach at Washington, they will always be in that race. Don James always said the number one goal is to win your conference; first and foremost.
But at the end of the day, the Rose Bowl is still a special place in the hearts of Husky fans.
