Pullman, Wash., is a place most teams would rather not play.
Washington State, led by quarterback Jason Gesser and undefeated in conference play, is a team most others would rather not face.
With only three weeks remaining in the season and bowl hopes built up or shattered every week, it’s a situation most teams would rather not think about.
But not the Oregon Ducks. The Oregon football team is taking all those factors — a road game in a hostile environment against a top-caliber team — and using them to its advantage.
“It’s fun being the underdog,” Duck free safety Keith Lewis said. “We’re ready to show what this program is all about.”
The Ducks will indeed be the underdog to a team that entered the season with high expectations and has, so far, matched those hopes. The Cougars are 8-1 overall, 5-0 in the Pacific-10 Conference and in control of the race for the Rose Bowl. Washington State’s only loss came at the hands of now-No. 3 Ohio State in the third week of the season. The Buckeyes are still undefeated.
“It’s going to take everything we’ve got to beat these guys,” linebacker David Moretti said.
Moretti and the rest of the Oregon defense will be under scrutiny Saturday as the Ducks face the conference’s second-best offense. The Cougars average almost 432 yards per game on offense, along with 35 points per contest. The Ducks’ defense is allowing 372 yards per game on defense, third-worst in the conference behind only Arizona and California.
“Obviously Washington State presents some matchup problems for us,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said. “We’re going to need a combination of pressure and coverage and disguising coverages to keep them off balance.”
Those disguising coverages will be focused on disrupting Gesser, the Cougars’ senior quarterback and one of the top signal-callers in the nation. After the Ducks gave up 536 and 448 yards to Arizona State’s Andrew Walter and USC’s Carson Palmer, respectively, the Ducks will have to face a quarterback this week who has the highest pass-efficiency rating in the league.
Lewis said he isn’t afraid of Gesser — in fact, he said he didn’t “see anything special about him” — but acknowledged that the Ducks will need to be defensive Saturday.
“We can’t give up explosion plays,” Lewis said. “We know they’re going to try to throw early.”
That challenge, the Ducks said, coupled with the challenge of playing on the road, will motivate them for Saturday. The last time Oregon faced a higher-ranked team was late last season at UCLA. The Ducks won that game, and have the conference’s longest road winning streak, at seven games. That streak is nine if you include Oregon’s bowl wins of the past two postseasons.
“It’s definitely a different mindset going on the road,” Bellotti said. “And our kids have fared well. We’re not exactly knocking people dead in those situations, but we’re getting the job done.
“We’ve done a good job of handling adversity on the road, and I like that.”
This road trip won’t be a vacation to the beach — more like a trip to Alaska. The forecast is for cold rain Saturday, and the Ducks say that won’t affect them at all.
“It would feel weird to play them here,” Moretti said. “The Palouse is kind of a home away from home for us.”
But perhaps the Oregon players don’t want to think of this as a road game. Perhaps they want to play up the fact that it’s on the road, in a cold place against a very good team. They think those things play into their favor.
Even if most other teams would think the opposite.