Huskies hope to prove coach wrong

When Steve Sarkisian said it, there was a pause among the assembled media, followed by furious scribbling of pens on pads and tapping of smartphones to post it on Twitter.

“I said this earlier to the staff and I’ll say it to you guys, if I’m an NFL head coach, I’d pick Matt Barkley over Andrew Luck,” Sarkisian said emphatically.

Sure, there were some words before that and some words that followed, but that one sentence is embedded in everyone’s mind.

The prevailing thought: “Did he just say that? He couldn’t have said that.”

Finally, sports talk radio host Jim Moore asked what most people were thinking, saying, “Did you really just say you’d take Matt Barkley over Andrew Luck?”

Sarkisian cut him off, saying: “I didn’t stutter, Jim.”

The statement didn’t create an uproar in college football, but there was a fair amount of talk about it in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Many shrugged it off as pregame posturing early in the week for Saturday’s game against the 18th-ranked Trojans in Los Angeles.

Even USC coach Lane Kiffin – a friend of Sarkisian – joked about it, mocking Sarkisian’s résumé and talent assessment abilities as an NFL coach.

“He’s never been an NFL coach, remember,” Kiffin deadpanned. “He made me go.”

Sarkisian laughed at Kiffin’s quip about being courted by the Oakland Raiders, but stood behind his comments during a conference call Tuesday for the Pacific-12 Conference.

“Andrew Luck is a great football player, and I don’t want to miss that point,” Sarkisian said. “He’s a tremendous football player and probably will be the first pick of the draft. I don’t get the first pick of the draft. If I had to pick a guy to run our system and what we are doing and what Matt knows and what Lane has been doing with him, I think he is playing at an extremely high level. That’s in no way a knock against Andrew Luck, just in what I see that Matt Barkley is doing this season for USC.”

That is what has been lost not only in the hype surrounding Luck, but even in Sarkisian’s comments: Barkley is having an amazing season. Statistically, it’s better than Luck in most categories.

Barkley is coming off a 42-17 win at Colorado where he set a school record by throwing six touchdown passes.

This season he has completed 229 of 342 passes (67 percent) for 2,608 yards and 28 touchdowns with six interceptions. He’s been named Pac-12 offensive player of the week four times.

Besides the record for touchdown passes in a game, he’s set three other USC single-game records this season – most completions (34 against Minnesota), most passing yards (468 against Arizona) and total offense (470 against Arizona).

“He is probably going to have one of the greatest quarterback seasons in USC history before this thing is all said and done,” Sarkisian said. “There have been some tremendous quarterbacks that have been there before him. So I have a hard time with anybody that could argue with that.’’

It shouldn’t be a surprise. This is what was expected of Barkley when he signed with USC coming out of national high school powerhouse Mater Dei in 2008. He was considered the best quarterback recruit in the country.

If Luck is a can’t-miss prospect in the NFL, Barkley was a can’t-miss recruit for the NCAA.

“Matt was the man in high school, and he still is the man,” said Washington quarterback Keith Price, who played in the same conference at St. John Bosco.

Sarkisian was still working for USC when he first saw Barkley as a freshman starter for Mater Dei.

“And they weren’t just handing the ball off,” Sarkisian said. “Right then it tells me this guy could handle a lot of different things. They ran a no-huddle offense when he was there. He’s obviously physically gifted, but it’s his knowledge of the game, his ability to get out of bad plays and get into good plays, and again to me it’s his ability to stand in the pocket and deliver throws with guys in his face and deliver them accurately down the field.”

Now a junior, Barkley is better.

“What Lane is doing with him, the variety of offense that they’re playing with, his ability to make all of the throws, anticipate throws, throwing them on time, throwing them accurately, he’s fantastic to me,” Sarkisian said.

And the Huskies have to try and slow him down, because obviously they aren’t going to stop him.

“He’s seen it all; I don’t think you’re going to fluster him. He’s pretty poised back there, been a starter for a long time, and he knows our defense pretty well,” Huskies defensive coordinator Nick Holt said. “He sees pretty similar looks at his practice, so I don’t know if we’re going to fool him. I hope that we don’t beat ourselves in letting big plays happen. Make them grind it out.”

You can’t really fool Barkley with anything, but that doesn’t mean you just play a vanilla defense and let him pick you apart.

“As a defense, you don’t want to make him comfortable,” linebacker Cort Dennison said.

Barkley complements his physical skills with film study.

“He’s got all of his checks down, and he’s good at audibles,” Dennison said. “You can tell he’s spent a lot of time in the film room. He sees everything so much better. Everything he has to offer definitely presents a major challenge for us.”

The Huskies already had to face Luck, who wasn’t forced to be much of a playmaker with Stanford’s running game doing most of the work in a 65-21 win. It’s not often you are forced to face two guaranteed first-round quarterbacks in the same season.

“They are both going to be playing on Sundays,” Dennison said. “That’s the beauty of our conference. We like playing the best, and they are two of the best. We relish the opportunity, and we are going to enjoy it.”

Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports