5 storylines to watch when the Huskies travel to Oregon State
Pac-12 play continues Saturday evening for Washington (2-2), which will head about five hours south on the I-5 corridor to meet surging Oregon State (3-1) at 6 p.m. in Corvallis.
This will be the first meeting between the two programs since November, when the Huskies opened their shortened season with a win over the Beavers at Husky Stadium. It will be the first meeting between the two at Reser Stadium since 2019. The Huskies won that meeting, too, as well as the seven before that. Oregon State’s most recent win in the series was back in 2011 in Corvallis.
Here are five storylines to watch this weekend:
1. The Huskies have had the upper hand in this series for nearly a decade, but can they stop Oregon State’s early momentum?
The Huskies opened as the favorite in this game, but the line shifted as the week progressed, with Oregon State now favored by 1.5.
It makes sense that Oregon State has the nod here, considering what the Beavers have done the past three weeks. They stuck with Purdue on the road until the final moments in Week 1, and have spun off three consecutive wins since against Hawaii, Idaho and USC, scoring 40-plus points in each contest.
The win over USC — which turned into a convincing 45-27 rout at the Coliseum in which Oregon State piled up six touchdowns — was the Beavers’ first in Los Angeles since 1960. Even if their season hasn’t played out as expected to this point, the Trojans were picked in the preseason media poll to win the Pac-12 South, and a win like this gives the Beavers, on the rise in recent seasons, a statement win as they return home to host the Huskies. Oregon State also received votes in the Associated Press poll this week for the first time this season. (Oregon, at No. 3, and UCLA, at No. 20, are the only Pac-12 teams currently ranked in the poll.)
Meanwhile, the Huskies have rebounded from their troubling 0-2 start the past two weeks, with wins over Arkansas State and California, but weren’t as convincing as Oregon State in their Pac-12 opener last week in Seattle, just outlasting Cal’s late rally with an overtime win.
UW has won nine consecutive games in this series, but is this the season the Beavers break the streak?
2. The Beavers rank in the top 25 nationally in both rushing offense and defense. Can the Huskies keep up on the ground?
Let’s start with Oregon State’s relentless rushing attack. The Beavers may be without All-Pac-12 running back Jermar Jefferson — who racked up 2,923 yards and 27 touchdowns in his three seasons — who was drafted by the Lions last spring, but their ground game still seems just fine. Their 226 yards per game rushing tops the Pac-12 through four games, and ranks 16th among FBS teams. Their 12 rushing scores rank second in the conference and tied for 10th nationally.
Redshirt junior B.J. Baylor, the conference’s reigning offensive player of the week, paces the rushing attack now, is averaging a Pac-12-leading 105.5 yards per game, picks up 6.9 yards per carry and is tied for the conference lead with seven rushing touchdowns.
Baylor has rushed for 150-plus yards twice in four games, piling up 171 against Hawaii in Week 2, and another 158 against USC last week. He had multi-touchdown games in each of Oregon State’s first three contests.
“He runs hard,” Huskies coach Jimmy Lake said this week. “He sees the hole and goes. He played against us last year, but of course Jefferson was the starter. Now he seems bigger. He’s getting more reps with the scheme, and the offensive line is really gelling well together.
“So, this will be another game we have to stop the run or they’ll just keep handing it off.”
Considering the Beavers piled up a season-high 322 yards against USC last weekend, how well they run against the Huskies — who have improved defensively against the run since Michigan racked up 343 yards against them in Week 2, but still rank 10th in the conference in yards allowed on the ground per game (165.8) — could be a deciding factor in this game.
On the flip side, the Huskies, despite looking to emphasize the run heading into the season, have had more trouble establishing it.
They are averaging a conference-worst 101.8 yards per game on the ground, which also currently ranks 114th of the 130 FBS programs. Oregon State has the second-best rushing defense in the Pac-12 (90 yards per game) and ranks 22nd nationally in the category.
3. Speaking of the run game, the Huskies have another mobile quarterback to try to contain this week.
Last weekend, Chase Garbers threw for a season-high 319 yards and two scores against the Huskies, and rushed for a season-high 71 yards and another touchdown, nearly completing a Cal comeback inside Husky Stadium.
This weekend, they have yet another dual-threat quarterback to deal with in Oregon State’s Chance Nolan.
“This is going to be — two weeks in a row — a big-time challenge for our defense,” Lake said.
The redshirt sophomore, after moving into the starting role earlier this season, leads Pac-12 quarterbacks with nine passing touchdowns, ranks second in completion percentage (72.3) and fifth in yards per game (211.8), and has added another 32.3 yards per game on the ground.
“You can tell he knows where to throw it, and then if it’s not there he can use his legs and run, which we just saw last week is a huge challenge,” Lake said. “The only thing he doesn’t have on Garbers is years of playing and years of starting in the Pac-12. So, he’ll see a different look from us.
“We’ll have to create a really good plan to keep him from running for first downs and also throwing for first downs.”
Oregon State’s total offense (473.5 yards per game) also leads the conference and ranks 24th nationally.
4. This weekend’s game is a battle of former Huskies coordinators — again.
This won’t be the first meeting between former Huskies coordinators Lake and Jonathan Smith since they took over as head coaches at UW and Oregon State, respectively, but it will be the first time Lake has faced another former UW coordinator turned head coach in back-to-back games.
Last week, Lake and the Huskies bested former UW defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, who was in Seattle in 2012 and 2013 before departing for USC with Steve Sarkisian and eventually taking over at Cal in 2017.
This week, Lake meets Smith for the second time as a head coach. Smith ran UW’s offense from 2014-17 before taking over at Oregon State in 2018. Lake and the Huskies topped Oregon State last season, 27-21, in the first meeting between the two.
Lake reminisced earlier this week on the first time he ever faced Smith as an opponent — back in the 2000 season, when he was a defensive backs coach at Eastern Washington, and Smith was piloting the Oregon State offense.
“My first college game I ever coached, he was the starting quarterback for Oregon State when I was at Eastern Washington,” Lake said with a smile. “We almost beat them, by the way.”
Oregon State ended up with a 21-19 win behind Ken Simonton’s record-breaking 200-yard rushing performance and three touchdowns, and the Beavers went on to finish 11-1, fourth in the AP poll, and topped Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl.
Two decades later, Lake expects another tough matchup against Smith and Oregon State.
“Smitty and I are very close,” Lake said. “He knows what I like. I know what he likes. It is definitely a fun competition, and I’m expecting he’s going to have an extraordinary plan against us.”
5. Remember these guys? Oregon State has several former high school standouts from Washington on its roster.
Oregon State has nearly a dozen players on its roster who played their high school football in Washington.
Two of them — redshirt junior Jack Colletto and junior Tre’Shaun Harrison — are former TNT state players of the year.
Colletto, who was a two-way star at Camas, is still doing a bit of everything for the Beavers in his fourth season with the program, and has played 90 snaps the first four weeks between offense, defense and special teams, per PFF.
He is listed on the depth chart as a backup at inside linebacker, and has tallied four tackles, including one for a loss and his first career interception against USC last weekend, but also has three goal-line rushing touchdowns in the past three weeks — two of them in the win over USC — from direct snaps, 11 total carries for 33 yards, regularly lines up on special teams, and even has one kickoff return this season. Against USC, he became the first FBS player to record two rushing touchdowns and an interception in a game since 2004, and only the fifth player since 1996.
Colletto was also Washington’s Gatorade Player of the Year his senior season, after pacing the Papermakers to their Class 4A state title win over Richland in 2016, capping a perfect 14-0 season in which he started at quarterback and safety, and posted 4,099 yards of offense and 48 touchdowns.
Harrison was considered a four-star athlete at Garfield — and the state’s No. 2 recruit in the 2018 class and No. 4 athlete nationally, per 247Sports — and is in his first full season with Oregon State after joining the program in early 2020 and playing in two games last fall.
He is listed as a backup at wide receiver on Oregon State’s depth chart, but has appeared on offense each of the first four weeks, and has played 60 snaps per PFF, hauling in eight catches for 110 yards. His first touchdown of the season last weekend in Los Angeles, on a 36-yard grab, gave Oregon State the go-ahead score in its eventual rout of USC. Harrison also eclipsed 600 career receiving yards in that game.
When Harrison was at Garfield, he racked up 1,102 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns his senior season in leading the Bulldogs to the 3A state semifinals and their best finish in three decades. He originally committed to Oregon ahead of his senior season, when Willie Taggart was the Ducks’ coach, but when Taggart moved on to Florida State, Harrison eventually signed with the Seminoles, and played two seasons in the ACC before returning to the northwest.
Former Federal Way standout Andrzej Hughes-Murray is in his sixth season with Oregon State, starts at outside linebacker and has played more than 200 defensive snaps this season, per PFF, tallied 14 tackles, including four for losses, and is tied for the team lead with three sacks through four games. He also has a team-leading seven quarterback hits.
Jesiah Irish, a Mount Si product, is listed as a starting option on kickoff return, and a backup at wide receiver, has played special teams and offense, as has former Archbishop Murphy and Neah Bay receiver Rweha Munyagi.
Right guard Korbin Sorensen (Kamiakin) and right tackle Taliese Fuaga (Mount Tahoma), and long snapper Cameron Landes (O’Dea), who are all listed as backups, have also played snaps this season.
Quarterback Jake Blair (Camas), offensive lineman Dakota Napierkowski (Camas) and defensive back Jaden Robinson (Auburn Riverside) are also on Oregon State’s roster, but have not appeared.
