This one was headed to overtime until the zebra called a bizarre excessive celebration penalty on Jake Locker of Washington with 0.08 left on the clock. Lest this sound like sour grapes, both announcers covering the game, as well as the FOX studio announcers, went on at length about the inappropriateness of the call. The call turned the PAT into (essentially) a medium length field goal, which BYU blocked.
Washington looked completely different from last week's 44-10 debacle at Oregon, particularly the offense. Some of it is likely just all the freshman getting past their first-game jitters. Some of it is that BYU is not as good as Oregon despite being ranked higher. Certainly their defense is not as good as Oregon's. Some of it is the home court advantage of Husky stadium. Some of it is the apparent emergence of freshman running back David Freeman, who provided some real spark where Chris Polk had not. Some of it is probably Locker's hamstring doing better. More identification will be provided by Oklahoma next week.
I'll predict UCLA > BYU next week in Provo, too.
Addendum: Jimmy Johnson calls the referee who called the celebration penalty an idiot, as reported in the Seattle Times Husky football blog.
Addendum: Terry Bowden on the call. Who knew Jake had so many friends?
Whew.
8 years ago
