Stanford runs over, around Huskies

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Reality hit the Huskies hard on Saturday, most often in the form of a bruising, first-down run by Stanford tailback Toby Gerhart. And by the time he was done dismantling a Husky defense that looked a whole lot like last year's, the feel on the Stanford Stadium sidelines was that maybe the Huskies still have a lot more work to do. The Cardinal threw only 14 times in a 34-14 win over UW, as Gerhart took 27 carries for 200 yards as part of a Stanford rushing attack that took the high of the UW's win over USC last week and drove it into the ground. The Cardinal's relentless ground game and the Huskies' inability to move the ball with any consistency - they scored just one offensive touchdown, and now have just two in the past eight quarters - made it obvious in the UW's first road game that maybe this team has a little farther to go than some people thought following last week's upset. Whether it was a letdown from that game, or the fact that the Cardinal simply played better on this night, the Huskies left Palo Alto having put forth just about the most disappointing performance possible. "Maybe because guys were scared, maybe because guys weren't confident in their abilities," UW linebacker Donald Butler said of his team's effort. "I don't know what it was." The loss ended what amounted to a weeklong celebration by Husky fans after toppling No. 3 USC at Husky Stadium on Sept. 19, a win that vaulted the UW into the AP top-25 poll for the first time since 2003 and had fans thinking that maybe the program was headed in the right direction a whole lot faster than anyone had imagined. That may still be true. But that talk will likely be tempered a bit after Stanford beat the Huskies back down to earth, one Gerhart carry at a time. "Don't accept the feeling," UW head coach Steve Sarkisian told his team afterward, also preaching, "the value of being able to be a physical team when you've got to be physical, and we weren't able to do that tonight." Up to that point, though, they had been. Washington looked like a completely different team against the Trojans the week prior, stuffing multiple third-down plays and flying to the football with an urgency not seen during last year's 0-12 finish. That upset, preceded by an encouraging effort in a loss to LSU in the season opener and a 42-23 win over Idaho the week after, had the attitude on Montlake as high as it's been in recent memory. But all the good vibes and national praise in the world wasn't enough by itself to slow down Gerhart. "There's plenty of work to do," Sarkisian said. "A lot of work to do. We are a young football team. But the goal is to continually get better and strive to get better day in and day out, week in and week out. I don't know if we did that today." Sarkisian said he didn't think there was any letdown caused by the emotions of the USC game. "I think they ran the ball almost 50 times and called maybe 14 passes, so they controlled the game that way. And then, in turn, we couldn't get the momentum back in our favor by being able to run the ball and take control of the game," Sarkisian said. "I don't think that's about a letdown emotionally. I thought our kids were ready to play. We've just got to do a better job of coaching and getting right." Though the offense obviously wasn't clicking - Jake Locker was just 16-for-31 for 190 yards and two interceptions - the biggest concern, again, is the defense. It's especially disconcerting that they allowed 321 yards rushing to a Stanford team that seemed fairly beatable. "There's some guys that are light little poles out there that can't bring them down, but we've got to be smart on how we approach a big kid like that and get him around his knees and things like that," defensive coordinator Nick Holt said. "We'll learn from it. Our younger guys will learn from it and so will our older guys, and we'll come back." They'll have to do it this Saturday in South Bend, Ind., against Notre Dame. And they'll have to be a lot better to shake the taste of losing the way they did against Stanford. "They don't like the feeling," Sarkisian said. "I think there's an expectation level around here of the way we play and the way we like to play, and we can play that way." Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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