Washington vs. Cal: Gameday Guide

Realized about halfway through the week that very little had been posted on the site specifically involving Cal. The combination of basketball season approaching, all the controversy surrounding Washington’s starting quarterback and three-game losing streak, and Cal’s position as the worst team in the Pac-12 contributed to this shortage of game material. However, since the result of today’s game will impact all of those things, I’ll include all the posts that vaguely involve today’s matchup.

Now for my game prediction. Cal actually worries me a little more than they appear to worry most Husky fans. I understand that they’ve struggled to score over the past few weeks, and that the defense is awful, but if Goff comes into this game with even half of the confidence he possessed at the beginning of the year, it will only take one or two broken coverages from the Husky secondary in the first half for this one to get very, very interesting, especially if Price continues to play poorly as a result of injury and subpar offensive line play (at least those appear to be the reasons for the dive in Price’s game).

Do I think the Huskies are going to lose? No, even if in the first half the secondary gives up a few stupid plays and Price throws a few errant passes into the hands of Cal defenders, Coach Sark would likely have a chance to slow the game down by leaning on Bishop Sankey, who will likely recover from arguably his first poor performance since at LSU last year. Plus, at home, Coach Wilcox’s defense has been stingy. Aside from the aforementioned broken plays, they have performed well against the run and the pass, and guys like Josh Shirley, Haoli Kikaha, and Cory Littleton should have a field day sacking Goff behind his injury-riddled line.

UW 35, Cal 17

Stories Especially Worth Reading:

• As always, Evan’s Game Preview is first.

• Jared Goff, who has started every game at quarterback this season as a true freshman, will be starting once again. That means he held off redshirt freshman Zach Kline, who was listed as a co-starter on the depth chart to begin this week.

• Meanwhile, Keith Price has apparently gotten healthy enough over the course of this week to start over redshirt freshman Cyler Miles.

• Doesn’t involve today’s game specifically, but definitely involves Cal and UW: the graduation success rates have been released by the NCAA. UW is 3rd in the conference for football and 2nd for basketball while Cal is simply dead last.

• Eric Nelson goes over the best and worst case scenarios for Coach Sark.

• Evan reminds Husky fans not to freak out quite yet.

• I sort of tell everyone they can freak out.

• Finally, this game will also be a chance to honor the memory of Coach Don James, who died last Saturday as a result of pancreatic cancer. Most of the staff here is too young to honor the great coach’s memory properly, but Paul Somerstein’s reflection on how the Dawgfather influenced his life as a Husky is a must read.