As if this week couldn’t get any better, news is coming down that Danny Shelton, the top uncommitted player in Washington, has committed to the Huskies. He’s a defensive tackle and is rated as a 3 or 4 star, depending on which service you look at. This news came shortly after the basketball team beat UCLA to give them a California sweep. I can’t remember a better sports week.
Andrew
Filed under Uncategorized
Jake Locker was a part of Husky football long before he enrolled at the University of Washington in 2006. His legend, of a state champion quarterback with lightning feet and the size and toughness to be recruited as a safety by USC, had long since rolled south from Ferndale. He was Montlake Jake before stepping on campus, destined to resurrect a football program suffering through its worst seasons in decades.
The legend only grew when he turned down major league baseball, something that his almost predecessor Matt Tuiasosopo didn’t do several years earlier. He spent 2006 redshirting, to some controversy. The team could have used him, and many were concerned that Jake would be gone to the NFL as soon as he became eligible. Regardless, it was no surprise when he easily won the starting job in 2007 and made his debut at Syracuse.
It was everything Husky fans had hoped for. Jake ran up and down the field, showing the lightning speed and strong arm that had so long been rumored. He wasn’t polished by any means, especially his passing, but that was to be expected from a freshman making his first start, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him leading the Huskies to a Rose Bowl win a few years later before becoming the first pick in the draft. The talent was that obvious, that mind-blowing.
And then things didn’t quite go to plan. 2007 was respectable but disappointing, more from a team standpoint than individual. Expectations were fairly high coming into 2008. The Huskies started the year with losses, none more devastating than against BYU, where the now infamous celebration penalty against Jake cost the Huskies a possible win. Still, Jake’s passing looked improved, and the poise he showed in leading that last minute drive against BYU would surely be put to better use down the road. In the fourth game of the year, against Stanford, everything fell apart. Jake broke his thumb while blocking, and stayed on the sidelines for the rest of the year. The rest of the team spiraled lower than anyone thought possible. Tyrone Willingham was fired but allowed to coach the rest of the season, and the team lost all will to fight. They went winless, even falling to the equally hapless Cougars in the Apple Cup. Some argue that the talent on that squad was better than most winless teams, but few teams have ever been as low emotionally as the 2008 team was to end the season.
2009 brought a new coach in Steve Sarkisian and a new attitude, along with Locker’s return. The turn-around they made that season now seems nothing short of remarkable. Central to the season was an astonishing upset against #3 USC, as Jake calmly led UW down the field for a last second field goal to win. The season was up and down, ending in five wins, but the Huskies won their last two against WSU and Cal in dominating fashion, leading to huge expectations for 2010 and that potential #1 spot in the draft for Locker, if he wanted to leave early to take it.
No one would have been a bit surprised if he had left, and the national media had pretty much written him off as a former Husky, when he walked into Sarkisian’s office with his new dog, Ten, and nonchalantly announced that he was coming back for one more year. Fans started talking of the Heisman and winning eight or nine games, a juggernaut offense behind Jake, Chris Polk and Jermaine Kearse a seeming certainty.
The only problem was that the team just wasn’t that good yet. The offensive line, along with the rest of the offense, struggled, and the defense was inconsistent. The Huskies lost a winnable opener to BYU, beat Syracuse, and then got crushed by Nebraska. They beat USC again and won a thriller at Husky Stadium against Oregon State, but Jake spent the second half of the season nursing broken ribs and the Huskies dropped three straight to a murderer’s row of Arizona, Stanford and Oregon to fall to 3-6. Even with three winnable games remaining, hopes for a bowl game were nearly gone, and Jake’s reputation had taken a major hit during an inconsistent and lackluster season.
Then UCLA came to town on a cold Thursday night. It was close for the first half of the game before UCLA began to fall apart. UW seemed to grow up that game, sensing the victory was theirs to take, and they finally took it. By the end it was a laugher, with the Huskies pounding on a completely inept Bruin offense. The Huskies next went to Berkley in a faceoff of two teams trying to keep their bowl hopes alive. Cal’s offense was nearly as bad as UCLA’s, but UW had a difficult time against a stout Bear defense. Trailing by three in the final minutes, Jake again took over. Clearly still hampered by the rib injury. He threw a long pass that Kearse made a great play on en route to moving the Huskies to the goal line in the final minute. The Bear defense stopped them there, however, and it looked like the Huskies would settle for a field goal to tie it. Sarkisian decided otherwise, and in a play that may have single-handedly restored Husky football to its traditional state of toughness and excellence, Chris Polk plunged through the line untouched, and the Huskies were 5-6 going into the Apple Cup.
Jake again wasn’t perfect against the Cougars, throwing an interception just before halftime that made a close game out of what probably should have been a blowout. Polk made the difference, though, running for 284 yards, and the Huskies found themselves in the now familiar spot of having the ball in the final minutes of a tie game. Locker and Polk again marched down the field, and Jake threw a perfect pass to Kearse for a go-ahead touchdown.
The Huskies would play in the Holiday Bowl. Montlake Jake’s legend was cemented in Husky lore.
No one expected a win in the Holiday Bowl rematch against Nebraska, and now, of course, no one will ever forget it. The team seemed to finally take on the full personality of Jake Locker, dominating with their toughness, playing loose and aggressive and fast. They exerted their will and did whatever was necessary to win. When Jake found no open receivers for nearly the entire game, he calmly threw the ball away or scrambled for first downs. The offense came differently, with a pass from Jesse Callier to Locker, and then Polk and Locker ripped the heart out of the Cornhuskers as they ran over and through their vaunted defense. Mason Foster, in many ways Locker’s twin on defense, led an effort that saw the Huskies dominate the line of scrimmage and limit the Huskers to under 150 yards of total offense before a late desperation drive brought the total to 189. Before that last drive, the defense held Nebraska to an incredible -36 yards in the fourth quarter.
The final score was 19-7, but the domination was greater than even the score would tell
Now, the legend of Montlake Jake is complete. It didn’t end in a Rose Bowl win or national championship, there is no Heisman, and Jake won’t be the #1 pick overall. And yet, I don’t know that The Jake Locker Era could have been any more satisfying if all that had come true. It feels as though it took a complete collapse that sent this football team to the lowest place imaginable for Jake Locker to get a chance to show who he is and what he could do. This team was remade in his image. For all his physical gifts that fans will marvel about for decades, what will be most remembered is his calm eyes in the biggest moments, his toughness, his loyalty, and a level of character not often seen in college football.
College football is the ultimate fan sport, and only so often do players come along that connect with the fans on a special level. The only such Husky I remember is Marques Tuiasosopo, whose charisma and late game heroics will be etched in my mind forever. I wasn’t quite old enough to have those type of ties with the early ’90’s teams, although I’m sure there are plenty who do. My dad seems to remember Sonny Sixkiller that way. Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson were certainly that on the basketball court. Reggie Williams and others had the onfield talent and production to be remembered, but for whatever reason, there was never quite the connection with the fans that moved them to that other level.
Jake Locker is that kind of player who will be remembered forever by anyone who watched him these past four years. His physical talents were incredible, but it is our good fortune as football fans that the intangible gifts that separated him from others are what also allowed him to bring Husky football back from the dead.
Jake Locker is everything we could ever want a football player to be. There will never be another Montlake Jake, but his legend will live forever.
-Matthew
Filed under Huskies Football
It’s a good day to be a Dawg. More on the game later, but what a night and this celebration deserves to break the “24 hour rule”. Wear your purple, and hold your head high tonight and tomorrow. Go Dawgs!
Filed under Uncategorized
Last night the Huskies defeated USC on the road in a tough, hard fought win. Afterwards, via news recaps, radio, other fans, I kept hearing how this was a great win because it’s a road win, and well, it’s assumed the Huskies don’t win on the road. As I listened to all of this, something was nagging at me: Aren’t the Huskies a decent road team? Aren’t they good enough? They win road games, and yet every time they do, people act as if they have NEVER won a road game, and now it just has become a mantra, “Romar can’t win on the road” and so forth. Because of this I decided to roll up my sleeves and get into the stats, because the stats don’t lie.
The sample set is the years 2002-2003 through last season, 2009-2010. These are the 8 full years Romar has been at the UW. I am looking at only in conference road records. That’s 72 road games for each team, 9 games a year for 8 years.
Here is an Excel spreadsheet I cooked up with all the details. It’s in Google Docs, so feel free to open and look at it, my comments below make more sense if you are looking at the spreadsheet at the same time. Here are the results:
School – Win % – Win-Loss
Arizona – 56% – 40-32
UCLA – 56% – 40-32
Stanford – 46% – 33-39
California – 44% – 32-40
WASHINGTON – 43% – 31-41
Arizona St – 37% – 27-45
Wash St – 36% – 26-46
USC – 33% – 24-48
Oregon – 31% – 22-50
Oregon St – 18% – 13-59
As you can see, the Huskies are right in the middle, but in the upper half. Stanford, Cal and UW are essentially tied, with Arizona and UCLA by themselves at the top and the Oregon schools in the cellar. Here are some of my observations:
The Huskies overall record on the road is not .500, but it’s not terrible either. There are only two schools out of ten in the last eight years who have an above .500 record on the road in the league. That tells me it’s hard to win on the road. So hovering around .500 on the road isn’t a bad thing, it’s just normal. (as an aside, Arizona and UCLA had some insanely good seasons early/mid in the decade, including an undefeated season by Arizona in 2003, so those years do throw the sample off a bit, just keep that in mind, those seasons are anomalies).
The Huskies, right now, are more talented than the four teams in front of them on this list, so going forward I expect these numbers to change positively for the Dawgs (last night’s win helps).
The five teams behind the Dawgs on this list are, in a word, terrible on the road in conference (ASU is bucking the trend the past two seasons, but on the whole they aren’t that good, and I expect them to stink this year). Of the 40 combined seasons these teams have played, only 5 seasons have resulted in an above .500 record on the road. That’s bad. Those types of numbers deserve criticism. Oregon and Oregon St are historically bad, Wazzu had two great season under Tony Bennett, and USC is just, well, USC, I have no idea what to say about them (their fans don’t care, why should I?). The upshot? The UW isn’t as bad as the majority of the league on the road.
To focus more on the Huskies, in the 8 years Romar has been head coach, the Dawgs have made the Big Dance 5 times. In those 5 years, the Huskies were above .500 on the road in conference 4 times. The exception was last year at 44%, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story because they finished the year winning 3 straight on the road, and then 3 more on a neutral court in the conference tourney. So away from home, in conference, last year, they were 7-5. The other three years when they did not make the tourney? Terrible. 3-6 and two 1-8 records. But those teams were not very good overall. They were imbalanced, young and incomplete teams that struggled. The upshot? When the Huskies are good, and I mean NCAA Tourney good, they are good on the road, they do not struggle in conference. They win the games they need to win on the road, then take care of business at home. When they are bad? Well, they are bad on the road. It’s not a big surprise, so why do people act as if they are bad when in fact they are good?
Overall the above point supports the broader data set. Of all the teams with above .500 records on the road in league over the past 8 years, all but one made the NCAA’s. The one not to make it was last year’s ASU Sun Devil team that was snake bit by an historically bad Pac-10 season nationally. Of the teams with sub .500 records on the road in conference that made the NCAA’s, 4 had to win the Pac-10 tourney to get in, most likely they would not have made the NCAA’s without the automatic bid. There are some exceptions, but on the whole, if you are good enough to be above .500 on the road in conference, you are good enough to make the NCAA’s.
The point I am trying to make here is the obvious fact that if a team has enough talent to make the NCAA’s, they will win on the road in conference. The years the Huskies had that talent, they won on the road. The years UCLA went to all those Final Fours? They won on the road. Arizona is always pretty good, so they obviously win on the road. But when a school has a bad team with sub par talent, wins on the road are by far the hardest to come by.
I think there is a notion among Dawg fans that even when Romar has a really good team, they can’t win on the road. That’s a myth that needs busting. You can make the same argument for any other school in the league, and probably nationally. UCLA can’t win on the road without Kevin Love. Arizona can’t win on the road without Lute Olson. Stanford can’t win on the road with Johnny Dawkins as head coach, and so on. This problem is not unique to the UW and I think it’s unfair to hang this stigma around Romar’s neck as if he’s the only coach/program with this problem. It’s a basic truth of sports: Superior talent = wins. Wins on the road are the hardest types of wins, so superior talent is needed to succeed away from home. Look at the top two teams on the list above, Arizona and UCLA. I don’t need to tell you how talented those two programs have been the past decade. Multiple Final Fours and loads of lottery picks. Of course they won on the road. The Huskies have had talented teams but nowhere near those two, so why expect the Huskies to be just as good? I think frankly the Dawgs have always played to their talent level on the road, just like everyone else.
I’m sure I am missing some trend in the data that helps clarify things, but you can look at my spreadsheet and decide for yourself. I am trying to bust a myth that I am honestly tired of hearing from people who should know better (some of them are getting paid to cover or follow the team). I know fans can and do believe things someone else repeats and they they just blindly repeat it not caring if it’s true or not. I know it can be frustrating, especially in the past, when the Dawgs would lose a road game they should have won. I understand that. But lets not let a handful of games cloud how we view this program as a whole, which in line with their talent, have been good on the road, relative to the rest of the conference. (I love high expectations, I want them to win every road game, I want this program to be on top of this list in a few years, so don’t accuse me of being a nancy fan with my nerd machine. The UW is my alma mater, I’m a Dawg for life, I’ll always be disappointed when they lose and glad when they win).
It’s worse elsewhere, you could be Oregon or Oregon St…
-Joe-
Filed under Huskies Basketball
The Huskies play the Nebraska Cornhuskers in about 4 hours. Quickly, here are 5 keys I have to the game.
In all honesty, I don’t see the Huskies winning. I think they lose by 10 or 14, call it Nebraska – 37 Huskies – 27. With that being said, don’t forget how great it is to be here. Put on your purple, and be proud to be a Husky fan today. Go Dawgs!
Andrew
Filed under Huskies Football
The UW basketball team got a huge win against USC tonight to open Pac-10 play. Here’s Percy Allen’s wrap-up of the game.
This win is significant for the Huskies to get the road monkey off their back and show that they can win tough, grind-it-out games. It wasn’t pretty, but the Huskies won against a good Trojan team and against the refs.
Now, on to the Holiday Bowl!
Andrew
Filed under Uncategorized
I had meant to put this up for a while, but never got around to it. For every Husky basketball game that’s on TV from here on out, I will try to put up the +/- for each player. +/- is an interesting stat for basketball because the sport is so dependent on all 5 players on the court. I’ll try to add up the stats throughout the season. Anyway, here are the numbers. (Venoy Overton was out for this game).
Isaiah Thomas: +37
Abdul Gaddy: +20
Justin Holiday: +31
Aziz N’Diaye: +6
MBA: +35
Darnell Gant: +12
C.J. Wilcox: +12
Scott Suggs: +10
Terrance Ross: +11
Brendan Sherrar: -6
Antoine Hosley: -6
This seems about right. Thomas was easily the best player on the court against Nevada and that shows in this stat. MBA was the player that benefited most from Thomas and Gaddy passing inside. He missed so many lay-ins but also was in charge of the post. I’m not sure why Aziz’s numbers are so low, he played a pretty good game.
I probably won’t be able to do this for tonight’s game, since it’s on the radio, but I will do the UCLA game on Friday.
Andrew
Filed under Huskies Basketball
This morning I read Geoff Baker’s blog regarding the Mariners 2011 payroll situation. Chuck Armstrong states the M’s will not reduce payroll, and Baker does a nice job listing the projected payroll of the roster this coming year. Here it is:
Ichiro 17,000,000
Milton Bradley 12,000,000
Chone Figgins 9,500,000
Felix Hernandez 10,700,000
Jack Wilson 5,000,000
David Aardsma 4,500,000 est
Franklin Gutierrez 4,312,500
Miguel Olivo 3,500,000
Jack Cust 2,500,000
Brandon League 2,500,000 est
Dustin Ackley 1,500,000
Jason Vargas 1,200,000 est
Erik Bedard 1,000,000
Brendan Ryan 1,000,000 est
Josh Wilson 700,000 est
Michael Saunders 435,000
Shawn Kelley 435,000 est
Doug Fister 435,000 est
Adam Moore 430,000 est
Justin Smoak 430,000 est
Garrett Olson 424,000 est
Matt Tuiasosopo 424,000 est
Dan Cortes 414,000 est
Cesar Jimenez 414,000 est
Josh Lueke 414,000 est
Michael Pineda 414,000 est
Carlos Silva money to Cubs — 4,500,000
Yuniesky Betancourt salary — 1,000,000
Baker points out the M’s only have about $5m left to spend to round out the roster.
I’m not going to pretend I know more about baseball than my cohorts on this blog. They may have a different view than I do, but when I look at the roster above, I am not excited at all. The Ms will be forced to find some bargains to bring in, which isn’t great news. I like some of the young guys, but seeing the salaries for so many overpaid bums really puts things in perspective. This roster is a mess, and it’s going to take a couple years to clean it up.
Let’s hope Jack Z knows how to dumpster dive.
-Joe-
Filed under Mariners, Wait 'Til Next Year, Y2011M!
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