The Husky basketball team is trying to recover after a taxing triple overtime loss to California over the weekend. Lorenzo Romar's squad let one slip away that could hurt big time down the road. The culprit as usual was missed foul shots and Jon Brockman was the goat after going two for eight from the line.
This week the Huskies make their annual jaunt down to the Willamette Valley to face Oregon and Oregon State. Neither program is anything special this year but history tells us the Huskies will split even though they will be favorites in both games.
I happen to think the Dawgs will do better than the split and sweep the Oregon teams this coming weekend. A big win in the Palouse two weekends ago tells me that this version of the Dawgs can play well on the road. The formula for winning in the conference is win at home and split on the road. This Huskies with one loss at home need to steal and extra victory on the road this weekend to even it out.
The Women
On the womens basketball front the team is reeling after two terrible losses to California and Stanford which could signal an early end to the Tia Jackson era at Washington. The Huskies lost be an unbelievable 77 points to Stanford on Thursday. On Sunday it wasn't much better as California led them 32-9 at the half on route to a 62-34 victory.
We discussed the womens team last week in the blog and the consensus was Jackson could use another year or two because of the turmoil that was created by Todd Turner before she arrived. That makes sense but I am also seeing way too much Andy Russo type play going on here.
Andy Russo was the Husky head basketball coach who took over for Marv Harshman. The program immediately declined under him and went into a tailspin that covered most of two decades. Russo was a nice guy who was way over his head. Jackson just could be in the same type of boat because it appears that she is losing her team much the way that Russo did.
Football
This was an extremely quiet weekend in Montlake with absolutely no news coming out about the football team for the first time since Steve Sarkisian took over. What is happening though is the coaches have hit the road and are on the recruiting trail. Sites that follow such activity like Dawgman are at a bit of a disadvantage this season because they really don't have a heads up on all the kids the new staff is recruiting.
In a usual recruiting year they have been following a set number of kids who have interest in the UW since May of the previous year. This year they have had to scramble in much the same way the new coaching staff has.
Word on who they have a chance with will start leaking out as soon as today because the visit lists are going to start filling up for the last three weekends of the recruiting season. The Huskies currently have eight kids visiting next weekend according to Dawgman.com. They also have eight currently conformed for the following weekend. For the final weekend they currently have three.
Of the nineteen kids currently listed for visits eight have already verballed to UW. I expect quite a few more to be added to these lists over the next couple of days.
Coaching Staff
Jeff Mills and Mike Cox are on board filling out the defensive side of the coaching staff. On the offensive side the Huskies will probably end up filling those positions after the coaches convention in Nashville during the middle of the month.
NCAA rules prohibit more than seven coaches being on the road recruiting at any given time. UW has seven coaches right now so the urgency of hiring someone immediately isn't a pressing need at this time.
A couple other names that emerged last week as possibilities are Raiders tight end coach Kelly Skipper, who has worked at WSU and UCLA, and DelVaughn Alexander, currently the WR coach at Wisconsin.
Duck for Thanksgiving?
The University of Washington and the the University of Oregon are in discussions about how to create much needed bye's in their football schedules next season. One possibility is playing the annual contest on Thanksgiving Day next season. The Oregonian has a story on that possibility.
A UW spokesman says that it's "very much of a long shot'' and that "there's a long way to go before something like that would happen. It's just one of a number of things we are discussing.''