The Washington Huskies and the Washington State Cougars are squaring off in the Apple Cup for the first time before November since 1948. Outside of the occasional October matchup in years predating ’48 the game is almost exclusively been played in November, the only exception in recent times is 2010 when they squared off on the 4th of December.
This will be the first time since 1961 that the matchup between the two major public universities in the state of Washington will be a non-conference game. After joining the Pacific Coast Conference in 1917, the Cougars went independent in 1959 when the PCC dissolved but rejoined the newly named Pacific-8 conference in 1962.
There is a ton of vitriol in this rivalry as many Cougar fans and media members mistakenly believe that Washington is the reason the Pac-12 conference demise. Flames were fanned even more when Washington hired WSU’s athletic director, Pat Chun, to fill the same vacancy in Seattle.
This matchup will be held at Lumen field and will likely be only half filled with sales at this moment under 40,000 seats sold.
Both programs come into the matchup at 2-0 and all victories won by double digits. The best name that either program has beat so far is WSU’s win over Texas Tech. The Red Raiders seems to be in a rebuild after a 52-51 double overtime win against Abilene Christian before the loss to the Cougs.
The matchups that will determine this game comes down to who can stop the run.
For Washington State the focus has to be on trying to throw as many bodies as possible at Jonah Coleman to bring him to the ground before he gets momentum. The Cougars look like the best D-line Washington will have played up to this point, but is still untested.
While Portland State was able to run for over 200 yards, the game was out of hand quickly with a ton of rotation on the defense and 28 players recording at least one tackle. The Texas Tech game also doesn’t tell much of a story as the Cougars forced Texas Tech to play catchup with the pass.
Tech Was able to find yards through the air, but miscues by the offense and some takeaways from the Coug defense doomed any chances of a comeback.
All of that to say Washington should be able to control the line of scrimmage with the run game. Jonah Coleman, Cam Davis, and Adam Mohammed will look to wear down the front seven of the Cougars.
Defensively the Huskies have their toughest test of the year especially with the running ability of Cougar quarterback John Mateer. Mateer has shown a fantastic ability to escape the pocket and punish teams for playing man-to-man defense. Against Texas Tech he ran for 197 yards while only throwing for 115.
Washington will always need to have a defender as a spy on Mateer to try and slow down his efficiency on the ground. Coach V mentioned his tendency to be a one-read and go type back that can possibly be tricked into a bad throw.
ESPN has this game as Washington favored by 5 and a total of 56.5 meaning they project this game to be about a 31-26 type contest.
The matchups seem to favor the Huskies in this matchup, but it is vital for the Huskies to get off to a good start. I don’t think this game will reach the 56.5 total point mark because of both teams relying on a steady run game to win.
My prediction: Washington: 31 WSU: 17
Washington -5
Under 56.5
