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Inside The Huskies

Surprise, Some Still See Bowl Game for UW

Postseason projections have the Huskies going one of two places.
Dan Raley|
Jedd Fisch has seen this Husky season tail off to the point there might not be a postseason reward.
Jedd Fisch has seen this Husky season tail off to the point there might not be a postseason reward. | Dave Sizer photo

With three consecutive losses, the University of Washington football team summarily has played itself out of College Football Playoff consideration, no surprise there.

After two subpar victories, the Huskies dropped from the Associated Press poll never to be seen again in the rankings, no argument here.

However, all has not been lost in terms of exterior rewards for Jedd Fisch's guys. There are still a couple of believers out there. Maybe foolhardy souls, but the UW still appears on their college football radar.

In the latest ESPN bowl projections, the Huskies (3-3 overall, 0-3 Big Ten) turn up not once but twice in those holiday postseason pairings -- with one of the match-ups a sentimental reunion and the other coming against a former blueblood it has never faced.

Consider the UW in a Dec. 23 match-up against former Northwest rival Oregon State and one-time Husky receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard in the Poinsetta Bowl at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego.

If that doesn't play out, how about a second trip to the Sun Bowl in three years for a Dec. 31 outing against Clemson, which has dropped a few notches since winning a pair of national championships.

Of course, the Huskies somehow will need to win at least three more games to reach the standard bowl eligibility threshold.

Shephard, the loquacious Husky wide receivers coach in 2022 and 2023, has brought life back to the Beavers program in his first season as a college head coach.

The Beavers have won four consecutive games after losing competitive outings to 20th-ranked Houston (33-20) and 10th-rated Texas Tech (35-24).

And Shephard has done it with offense and more offense. In the four victories, Oregon State has put up 52, 33, 56 and 66 points, the latter totals coming against Colorado State and San Diego State, respectively.

With his nonstop enthusiasm and fast-talking ways, he's been an ideal fit in Corvallis, which won't have him long if his career continues in such a upward manner.

If a family reunion isn't in the works, the Huskies might end up facing a Clemson team doing a reset in Dabo Swinney's 19th season as coach.

The Tigers are 3-2, having beat Bill Belichick and North Carolina 28-20 and the California Bears 24-10 while getting paddled 51-10 by LSU and 41-13 by Miami.

Clemson was a program that advanced to the CFP national championship game four times in five seasons and won the title in 2016 and 2018.

Over those five years, Swinney's teams were 57-3 as they ruled the college football landscape.

However, the past season and a half, Clemson has been a mere mortal 10-8 overall, with their coach largely ignoring the transfer portal in favor of developing his own players.

Many of the current Huskies -- 25 in fact -- are still on the team from the previous Sun Bowl excursion that ended with a 35-34 loss to Louisville.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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