Beavers toss Huskies aside in lopsided beating

CORVALLIS, Ore. - This was 2008 bad. This was the kind of domination so total that the game was decided before the Washington football team even got on the board, something that hadn't happened yet in this rebuilding season. But that was the scenario the Huskies were faced with Saturday against Oregon State with nearly eight minutes left in the first half. At which point the Huskies had exactly 9 yards of total offense. A bowl team, this is not. Oregon State took a three-score lead into halftime and was never challenged, officially eliminating the Huskies from postseason contention with a 48-21 blitzing that was never close and never in question. "Well," said UW head coach Steve Sarkisian, "that was an ugly football game." Yeah, it was. For a team that still held bowl aspirations - however slim they may have been - the Huskies were shockingly uncompetitive. Their offense was a disaster from the opening drive, Jake Locker took four sacks, and they didn't cross midfield until their final drive of the first half. Take this Washington sequence in the third quarter on a drive that started from its own 23-yard line as evidence of just how inept the Huskies were offensively: First down: Holding. First-and-20: 3-yard carry. Second-and-17: False start. Second-and-22: Incompletion. Third-and-22: Delay of game. And the Huskies next series started with a false start, but by then, OSU led 41-7, and it didn't really matter anymore. The Huskies had 82 yards at halftime, a number only as high as it was because of a late touchdown drive. It was the worst effort of the season in every way imaginable. Nothing went right. "There wasn't a phase where we performed to our capabilities," Sarkisian said. "And that's what's disappointing from a coaching standpoint. You want to achieve or play as close to your level of capability as possible, and today, for whatever reason - that's what we have to figure out - we just didn't do that. We didn't perform at a level that we're capable of." That was obvious from the beginning. The Huskies went three-and-out on their first possession, then, after forcing OSU to punt, Locker threw an interception on the next play at UW's own 17-yard line. The Beavers scored two plays later, and the rout was on. They led 20-0 after a 6-yard James Rodgers touchdown catch with 7:38 left in the first half. "We just didn't play the kind of football we've played all year," Locker said. "We couldn't get anything going offensively. We put our defense into tough situations, and they were able to score a lot of points. We just didn't look like a team that we looked like for nine weeks to this point." And even when Locker hit Jermaine Kearse from 3 yards out for a touchdown with 2:21 left before halftime that cut it to 20-7, OSU quashed any hope of a comeback by going 70 yards in 10 plays to tack on another touchdown with 24 seconds left. Then Rodgers took the opening kickoff of the second half to the 1-yard line, the Beavers punching it in two plays later to take a 31-7 lead in a game that felt a whole lot like last season for the Huskies. Rodgers caught two touchdown passes, and his brother, Jacquizz Rodgers, OSU's diminutive tailback, ran for 159 yards and his 16th and 17th rushing touchdowns of the season. Beavers quarterback Sean Canfield threw four touchdown passes. Locker finished 14-23 for 153 yards, somewhat salvaging his numbers by tacking on two touchdown passes in garbage time in the second half. Chris Polk was UW's only bright spot, taking 19 carries for 116 yards. OSU scored on seven consecutive possessions at one point, moving the ball in big chunks and converting every third down it was faced with. There was no UW offense. No defense. Will Mahan even shanked a punt. The UW's frustration level? "Really high," defensive coordinator Nick Holt said afterward. "Really high." In a season full of what-ifs, this one was more of a "what happened?" "I don't know if it had as much to do with them or if it had to do with us," Sarkisian said. "We couldn't get out of our own way offensively for awhile. Our defense tried to hang on. We didn't function very well on special teams, obviously - the shanked punt, the big kickoff return. All three phases, we just didn't perform to our capability." Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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