Washington To Play Utah Saturday Night

With all of the college football world (at least on Twitter) clamoring for a Washington-BYU showdown this weekend to replace the Apple Cup we’ll instead get a matchup between a different program from the Beehive State. The Huskies are now scheduled to play the Utah Utes (0-1) at 7:30p on Saturday night on ESPN.

One of the legitimate reasons why BYU turning down the opportunity to play Washington made sense was the possibility that their bitter rivals would end up securing the Dawgs instead. Pac-12 guidelines put into place last week to allow for non-conference play stipulate that if a Pac-12 opponent becomes available that the conference matchup takes precedence. That ended up being the case as Arizona State for a 3rd straight week was unable to field a minimum number of players because of an extensive team-wide outbreak of COVID-19.

Now though the Huskies can focus on playing Utah with a full 4 days until game time which is less than a normal week but not quite as hastily thrown together as UCLA/Cal from a few weeks ago. The Utes last season came to Washington and came back to win on the back of superlative play by QB Tyler Huntley. That won’t be the case this season.

After a long, long wait Utah eventually announced that Cameron Rising had won the starting quarterback battle only to have him injured for the season after just 6 pass attempts. South Carolina transfer Jake Bentley took over and will be the starter against Washington. Although he didn’t have a great performance in the loss to USC (16/28, 171 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT). That was the case all around as the Utes lost 33-16 to the Trojans. A game which was much less close than the one Arizona played against USC the previous week before getting clobbered by Washington.

But the transitive property doesn’t always apply in college athletics. Bentley will have the benefit of starter’s reps in practice and the Utes now have a game under their belts. We’ll find out how things unfold on Saturday night. Which is much better than the alternative of having nothing to unfold which is where we were until just now.

It’s game week Dawg fans.