Gameday of Husky Week
After a week off for both Oregon State and Washington, its back at it for the November last 1/3 of the season. October is the part of the season when football is at its best. But November is when football is played that will be remembered. (Assuming of course at least some good football was played in October!) It's November when league championships (well, appearrances in league championship games) and berths in better bowls (or sometimes any bowl) are decided on the field.
Both the Beavers and Huskies played some of that good football in October, and as a result, both will be bowling. Friday night will, however, go a long way to determining how good a bowl it will be. It might even play into the Pac-12 Championship picture. Oregon State and Washington are both 6-2, and 3-2 in conference. The winner will need some help to get to Las Vegas for the Pac-12 Championship game in a month, even if that team runs through the rest of November with 3 more wins. The loser can focus on trying to improve their prospects over the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl, but that's about it, while the winner has a measure of control in the hunt to get to Las Vegas for a bowl game, if not a championship game, or to one of the other better bowl destination. So its sort of a playoff game for that purpose alone.
It's also a chance for another check box item on Coach Smith's 2022 tour of check boxes, as it would be the Beavers' first win in Seattle since 2008. Oregon State did end their 9 game (almost all in blowout fashion) losing streak against Washington last year, when Everett Hayes hit a 24 yard field goal as time expired to garner the 27-24 win that was one of Smith's earlier checked off check boxes. But beating the Dawgs on the shore of Montlake would be an oversized check box checked.
It certainly won;t be an easy checkbox to check, what with Washington QB Michal Penix Jr leading the top passing offense in the country. Fortunately, Oregon State has one of the best defenses in the conference, and if they can approximate what they did to USC, the 4.5 point deficit (up from 3.5 earlier in the week), despite the Beavers being the higher ranked team, is not unreasonable to overcome.
Coach Smith got another check box checked this week, despite not playing last week, when the Beavers were ranked 23rd in the AP poll, the first time they have cracked the polls sincce 2013. That has to have rankled the Huskies, who are effectively ranked 32nd, a few spots back in the receiving votes category.
Gameday of Husky week was a big deal for a long time. But the dampened crowd of the late-Covid-era game last year, when Washington was spiraling towards a 4 win season, and it was not yet at all apparent Oregon State would do much better, and being over a month earlier than it is this year, wasn't the energy event that the rivalry usually was. Coupled with the last trip to Seattle being a game on a cold dark night with no one watching in massive Husky Stadium due to Covid, well, its been a while since Husky week has been as anticipated as this one. The 2019 UW game, which was the last time the Beavers played on a weekday other than the day after Thanksgiing, was also a Friday.
It's been 4 years since Beaver fans have made the trek north.
It won't be as nice this time either, as the forecast calls for an "Atmospheric River" to flow into and onto Husky Stadium (and most of the western part of the northwest for game night. Oregon State has caught trememdous weather in several of their recent treks to Husky Stadium, so some new to Beaver Nation may not know just what November can be like up there.
And its not even the traditional gameday, being a Friday night game, a known crowd killer most places in the Pac-12, and no where moreso than in Seattle, which means those that do go (Dawgs or Beaves) WILL spend more time in traffic and battling parking than the game will take. It's also another night game, the 8th in 9 outings for the Beavers so far this season.
I was there for that win in 2008, and also (many) more Husky wins than losses (the Dawgs dominate the series, both recently and over the 106 meetings that date back to 1897, an OSC, not U, win for the Aggies before they were Beavers), and didn't think at the time it would take at least 14 years to celebrate in Seattle again. That's part of what makes Husky week even more special than Gameday usually is/ When the Dawgs do go down, its always been an occasion.
But even if it is one of Husky Stadium's worst nights of weather, I'm more than happy to be going back again, and for a November game that should be one most will remember, regardless of whether the sweatshir under their rain gear is orange or purple.
Go Beavers! (And as the band always cries during Washington week "Kill The Huskies"!)
Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com
Photo by Andy Wooldridge