Just under one year ago, Washington and Oregon met in Las Vegas. A win in the final-ever Pac-12 Championship Game booked a playoff spot. The Huskies prevailed, for the second time that season, and sealed their seat in the Sugar Bowl. The Ducks suffered a second frustrating loss.
One year later, the Ducks (11-0) are once again in contention for a national championship. The Huskies, though, sit at 6-5 and decidedly out of the spotlight. The game will be significantly changed when the two meet at Autzen Stadium this weekend.
I talked with Ty Gilstrap, sports editor at the Daily UW, about Saturday’s game.
Owen Murray: What would surprise one-year-ago-you the most about this game?
Ty Gilstrap: That only one of these teams [is] ranked. It just seems like Washington was kind of building a little bit of the foundation to where it could have been sustainable. Obviously, [it lost] some of their top talent, but there was the kind of hope that the transfer portal could sustain it for a little bit longer. And then in that [October 2023] meeting, when it was No. 8 versus No. 6, what Oregon was building was definitely moving in the right direction. It honestly doesn’t surprise me at all that [the Ducks] are the number one team this year.
OM: What concerns you about Oregon that didn’t worry you (as much?) last year?
TG: I honestly thought Washington flew under the radar [last year] for far longer than it should have, and Oregon had that national credibility, and that kind of gave it an edge. And I truly felt Washington entered those two games [against Oregon], as it turned out, as the better team on both sides of the ball. They could hang out long enough in defense, and I thought that their offense, obviously, was one of the greats in college football.
But Washington is now a team that cannot compete with Oregon on any level or in any unit. [Head coach] Jedd Fisch speaks often about how this team hasn’t been able to play all three levels consecutively. These are teams they can’t do it against, against those top level teams.
OM: A year ago, this game was about two explosive offenses. Rolling into this game, the Big Ten co-defensive players of the week were Oregon’s Matayo Uiagalelei and Washington’s Russell Davis II. How significant is that?
TG: The defense is definitely in an entirely new league of its own compared to past years. Russell Davis was injured for most of the season, and this was just his third game playing. There’s been contributors up and down that defensive unit, whether that’s Steve Belichick’s schemes —which Will Rogers said is the most difficult he’s seen in college football — [or] they also just have some talented players on that side of the ball. That’s just something Washington fans haven’t been accustomed to [over] the last few years.
OM: One year in, do you think the Big Ten move has been a net positive for Washington and for the conference as a whole?
TG: Purely from a Washington perspective, no, it has not been a positive because of the road travel. They haven’t won a game on the road. That could be completely unrelated to the Big Ten…but when you’re playing two 9:00 a.m. games against Indiana and Iowa, and then you’re traveling all the way to Pennsylvania, which is not an easy place to get to, it does provide challenge to the team, and that’s something they’re not used to.
The conference, I think, benefits from the resumes that it’ll be able to show. Washington still has, in some perspective, that national championship credibility of the game they participated in last year. So, when Indiana is the number five team in the country, they could point to the fact that even though Washington may not be the best this season, that brand that they’ve built over time definitely helps with the conference.
OM: What does this game mean to Huskies fans this year?
TG: I said all along that not a single Washington fan will care if they lose to Indiana, if they lose to Penn State, if they lose to USC, if they lose to UCLA. They don’t care if [it means] they have a chance to beat Oregon. I think this game will be just as meaningful as years past for a lot of Washington fans, just because this rivalry means so much, especially in a year where it’s all or nothing. Maybe not last year, where so much was riding on it, but it’ll still kind of have that same emotion.
–The Daily Emerald and the UW Daily are competing in the Student Media Showdown to fundraise this week. The two are going head-to-head to raise the most money to support independent student journalism, and the competition ends at kickoff on Saturday. Donate here or online at dailyemerald.com/donate.
