The Washington Football team has a lot of ground to make up to get an NCAA playoff invitation. The first ranking poll is out, and 7-1 Washington sits at number 12
It’s not where you begin the journey, but where you end up that matters. Such is the case for the 7-1 Washington Football team. Right now, the Washington Huskies are chasing front-runner Stanford for the Pac-12 North championship. As it stands, Stanford is 5-1 and Washington is 4-1. A similar situation is occurring in the Pac-12 South, as USC is 5-1 and Arizona is 4-1. But Arizona is on a four game winning streak.
On one hand, we had discussed earlier that week 10 will help shake out the contenders from the pretenders in the Pac-12. On the other hand, as the conference sorts out their own pecking order, there remains the distant goal of an NCAA invitation. In fact, as it stands now, the team with the best chance of obtaining such an invitation is Washington, but only if the Huskies go undefeated for the remainder of the season.
Tough sledding
That won’t be easy. The team faces Oregon this weekend, then travels to 21st ranked Stanford. The team then returns home to face Utah and finally 25th ranked Washington State.
While all of that remains in the near future, the Huskies stand at number 12 nationally.
And so the question is, can the team impress enough in the remaining four games to make up eight spots? Tough climbing.
Where there is a will, there is a way
The Washington Huskies must take care of business. That translates into focusing on the game at hand. No looking forward. No looking past. Right now that game is Oregon. But other games in the nation become of interest to the Huskies now too.
And Pac-12 teams become very important as well. The Washington Football team ideally must win every game. But the flipside is that each future opponent must do well too. In short, the better the opponent, the better the Huskies.
The problem remains that there are simply too many one-loss teams between Washington and the invitation right now. Four of those teams are undefeated. The remaining seven teams are one-loss teams, but have captured the hearts and attention of the national sports media.
Next: Week 10 in college football has huge Pac-12 title implications
Washington fell once to a well prepared Arizona State University team. Even in the chaos of that game, the team had plenty of opportunities to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Now, that is no longer an option. Win or go home is the playoff format. This year, the Washington Football team find that format has arrived six games earlier than scheduled.