Monday Dots: Huskies Survive Brigham Young East

I’ve seen Dots play with flames

In a lake of fire that I was standing in

Met the devil in Seattle

And spent 9 months inside the lion’s den

• Starting off away from the gridiron this week, the #19 UW volleyball team has had to overcome three recent injuries to key players. Nonetheless, they swept Cal over the weekend to keep up momentum in a tough closing stretch to the season. The Dawgs will face a difficult schedule as they try to catch Stanford and USC atop the Pac.

• Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff put on a brave face at the conference’s basketball media day. He said that the conference’s next media deal will close the gap with the SEC and Big 10, and that the long-term plan is to “catch” those conferences. While I appreciate the positivity, it’s going to take more than shrewd negotiating to change the revenue trend.

• While the Dawgs didn’t play, the Pac-12 was busy over the weekend with top teams taking care of business over the bottom feeders. Those results landed three Pac-12 teams in The Athletic’s top 10 as part of the ranking of all 131 teams. UW checks in at 26th and would assuredly enter the top-25 with a win over #20 Oregon State this weekend.

• The bye week meant that coaches had time to traverse the country to spend time with recruiting targets. Dawgman has the details in Scott Eklund’s recruiting blog.

• Among those trips, Kalen Deboer and Ryan Grubb flew to tourist mecca Pierre, SD to see QB commit Lincoln Kienholz in person. Real Dawg gave updates on Kienholz, who is now 10-0 on the season and into the South Dakota playoffs.

• SI’s Dan Raley wrote about the turnaround on the UW offensive line this year. While there is still some room to improve in the run game, the relative strength of the unit from last year to this year is yet another data point for the drastic offensive improvement.

• Two college soccer heavyweights battled in Palo Alto over the weekend. #5 Stanford hosted #1 UW and the teams played to a 3-3 draw. The draw keeps the Dawgs undefeated through the year with 13 wins and 3 draws.