Washington Huskies:

Latest unleashed Posts

Huskies Believe Big

By Athletic Communications on September 15, 2010 2:06 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

SEATTLE - I don't know if the Huskies will beat eighth-ranked Nebraska inside raucous Husky Stadium on Saturday.

I do know that Washington's players believe - make that, know - they can.

"We can play with them," senior linebacker Steve Sarkisian biggest accomplishment in his one season plus two games coaching the Huskies.

The progression from hope to mere faith to having real reason to believe is the process of revival at Washington. Sarkisian and his staff have taken the Huskies to this final step - legitimized belief -- while bringing Washington football back from an abyss with a five-win improvement in 2009, upgrading the athleticism in all three phases of the game, attracting recruits and exciting fans.

Other than that, Sark and his pals haven't been doing much at Montlake.

Of course, all teams say they believe they can win all games. When's the last time you heard a player in any sport at any level say "We have no chance this week"?

But these Huskies have legitimate reasons to believe they can make a national statement on their revival against the Cornhuskers. They are in dogged pursuit of Washington's first bowl game since 2002.

I was struck by their how much they believed in themselves in the locker room, inside a cramped media room and on the way onto their buses on a hot night in Utah earlier this month. After an opening loss at Brigham Young in which the Huskies mainly beat themselves, Sarkisian and his players spoke of a 13-game season. That, of course, means a bowl game.

Even at the height of their frustration after a mistake-filled night, they believed big.

"The best thing about it is our players won't be in awe of the moment. We won't be in awe of them coming out or their helmets or their fans," Sarkisian said of facing Nebraska on national television inside a likely-to-be-sold-out Husky Stadium. "Our players have been there before."

Almost 12 months ago to the day, in fact. Washington was 1-1, just as it is now, early in 2009 entering what is a recent habit of facing a titan in Week 3. Those Huskies said, albeit with less gusto than now, that they could compete with third-ranked USC. That was faith talking, the product of Sarkisian's complete remodel of the psyche, environment and makeup of the roster and the program. Their only win under Sarkisian to that point was at home against Idaho in a shaky defensive day.

Then Washington went out and stopped the Trojans' vaunted offense, did just enough against what Sarkisian called the nation's best defense at that point in '09 - and beat USC 16-13.

The Huskies, not accustomed to the heady national ranking that win earned them, then played poorly at Stanford in losing the following week and didn't rebound until late in the year. But that win over the Trojans is why the Huskies believe they can beat the Cornhuskers on Saturday.

It's refreshing and uplifting, this believing with a legitimate foundation. Sure beats hollow faith.

That's what 2008 felt like, among other things. The loss that accelerated the debacle of that '08 season season and the demise of coach Tyrone Willingham was a one-point home defeat to BYU, when Jake Locker was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct on what should have been his tying touchdown late. (I won't recount that in further detail. If you are reading this, you already know more about that than you ever wanted to).

Next it was time for the annual Week 3 behemoth, this time third-ranked Oklahoma. All that Locker could say that week was that "we made a lot of strides just in that belief that we're good enough" to compete with BYU.

Those Huskies had never won consistently in college. So they had no legitimate reason to believe they could beat Oklahoma.

Washington lost to the Sooners 55-14, the largest margin of defeat in a home game since 1929, and didn't win again until Sarkisian arrived.

He restored hope immediately upon his triumphant, energized arrival from being a perennial Pac-10 champion and national title contender while a top assistant at USC. Nine months later, the players began believing. Then came the upset of the Trojans, the signature win of Sarkisian's early tenure that legitimized their beliefs.

Another chance at a signature victory is there for the taking on Saturday.

"I'm a big guy in looking at facts and trying to find things that really matter that we can give to our team," Sarkisian said. "You look at our last three ball games at home, our opponents have had nine pre-snap penalties on offense - seven false starts and two delay of games. That's a tribute to our fans and the energy and enthusiasm they bring that not only does our team feed off of but also has an effect on our opponents.

"We'll be calling on all our Dawgs to bring it on Saturday."

Since Sark's into facts, here are some more than give Washington reason to believe it can beat Nebraska:

*The Huskies have outscored their last three home opponents - Washington State, California and Syracuse -- 131-30 dating to last fall's Apple Cup. OK, WSU is so awful that one shouldn't count. But that's still impressive and emboldening.

*Yes, Nebraska redshirt freshman quarterback Taylor Martinez has rushed for 284 yards and five touchdowns in two games. But Washington is not Western Kentucky or Idaho. And this will be a stern test for the kid, his first road start in front a packed, roaring crowd and frothing-at-the-mouth defense.

When Washington defense has had normal or advantageous field position this season, they've excelled. It was almost amazing BYU only scored 23 points with as much time as the Cougars spent in UW's end of the field, because of so many special-team errors by the Huskies. Syracuse took a 10-0 lead early in last week's game only because of more special-team mistakes by Washington. When it had more of the field to defend, the Huskies outscored the Orange 41-10 - and seven of those 10 points came late, after a UW fumble gave Syracuse the ball at the Huskies 14.

"We're playing at a better level than last year," defensive coordinator Nick Holt said, "because we know the defense better."

Wait, better than when Washington held USC to 13 points at this point last year?

Hey, there's another reason to believe!

Greg Bell Unleashed

By Athletic Communications on September 8, 2010 1:59 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

You already know all about Jake Locker. So let me tell you about the quarterback of the Huskies' defense, Cort Dennison.

Defensive coordinator Nick Holt calls the junior middle linebacker who will make his second career start at the position on Saturday against Syracuse in Washington's home opener "the blood and guts of our defense."

Our nation's military called Dennison one of the best young leaders in the United States. The Army wanted the Utah all-state tight end from Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City to play football at West Point, then lead men into war.

I know what it takes to even be considered for admission to the U.S. Military Academy. I graduated from there, in 1993.

I met with Dennison after practice inside Husky Stadium on Tuesday to find out what he thought of West Point. I always say it is a great place to visit, but not so hot a place for a college kid to live. You'll have to trust me on that one.

Then-Army football coach Bobby Ross, a former Super Bowl coach, loved Dennison enough that he ensured Cort in 2006 that he wouldn't have to go through the normal process of securing one of the few hundred annual Congressional appointments for admission to the Academy. That's the rout I and most of the approximately 1,000 new cadets take to join a student body of about 4,000.

I was a defensive end for Steubenville, Ohio, High School who started two state championship games inside Ohio Stadium - Ohio State's giant "Horseshoe." Yet I wasn't as accomplished a player as Dennison. Not only was Army courting Cort, then-Huskies coach Tyrone Willingham wanted the Utah state athlete of the year.

Plus, as Holt simply says of Dennison, "he is smart."

Then again, saying Dennison is "smart" is like saying the colorful, fiery, opinionated Holt--the Mr. Clean-looking menace who often barks at his defense from the numbers painted toward the hashmarks -- is "interesting."

Dennison had a 3.7 grade-point average in high school. He was not only a star in football but in basketball. He performed over 400 hours of community service in and around Salt Lake City while at Judge Memorial.

No wonder the Army wanted him to be a lieutenant leading soldiers into war.

"I took a visit back there and they pretty much told me they wanted me there really badly," he says now of West Point. "The next week, I came back and I was thinking about it - and Tyrone called me and he offered me on the phone "I jumped on it."

Dennison wanted to stay closer to home. He also loved the idea of playing in the Pac-10 while earning a degree from what he proudly calls "one of the best public institutions in the world."

That's not to say he didn't like West Point. He visited in early 2007. The coaches took him from the New York-area airport and drove him across the George Washington Bridge, through Times Square, to the Bronx and past Yankee Stadium. Heady stuff for a teenager from Utah.

Then they drove him about an hour up picturesque Palisades Parkway, through the sleepy village of Highland Falls to West Point. Dennison stayed in the Spartan barracks room of Army sophomore fullback Collin Mooney, an all-state high school player himself from Katy, Texas.

"It was a fun experience. It was something I've never experienced before," Dennison says of his stay at rugged point where the Hudson River bends upstream from New York City.

"I'm not used to the whole academy kind of a thing. And the tradition. I didn't realize how on point they were, how technical everything is, how first-class everything is."

Dennison saw how the "dorm" rooms weren't allowed to have televisions. He saw the beds cadets made so tightly each day that, yes, quarters really can bounce off them. (Actually, wiser cadets don't sleep under the covers, so all you need to do is tighten the bed each morning.) He saw the spit-shined black shoes and boots perfectly aligned beneath those beds.

He saw parade drills on "The Plain" in front of the giant mess hall, in which 4,000 cadets eat at the same time, family style. He went to classes, most of them in windowless rooms taught by uniformed, active-duty Army officers. They were no way optional. Miss one and you may be pacing Academy grounds carrying a rifle in full parade uniform for hours on end in discipline "tours" that weekend. Miss two and you may be through as a cadet.

Dennison saw room inspections, in which dust balls are viewed to be nearly as destructive as live grenades. He learned how the wool uniforms not only had to be hung, but the hangers' hooks had to be canted in the same direction. He didn't see baggy cargo shorts, sandals or stylish shirts you might wear to a bar. Underclassmen have to have those locked away downstairs in a storage locker.

He sure as heck didn't even see a bar. Like I said, a great place to visit but ...

So why wouldn't he have chosen that? Or better yet, you may be thinking right now: why would he?

"I didn't realize how many professional CEOs had graduated from the Academies such as Army, Navy and the Air Force," Dennison said. "It was a really eye-opening experience. Definitely, the education was top-notch.

"But I'm really happy with my decision," he says of Washington, "and I'm glad I'm here. I mean, I love Seattle. And I really didn't want to do the five-year service after."

Ah, yes, the service time.

A cadet does not have to pay for his education - the government and tax payers do - in exchange for at least five years of service as an officer on active duty. I spent those years as a tactical intelligence officer, which basically means I learned and assessed for the battlefield commander what the bad guys have and how many there are coming against us. I had a tank, a Humvee, a pistol, I jumped out of airplanes - cool stuff.

I eventually got assigned to Fort Lewis outside Tacoma and fell in love with the Puget Sound area. That's how I found myself after my five years of service time was up in Seattle as the national sports writer for The Associated Press. I had spent a decade in the Bay Area first getting a master's degree from the University of California in Berkeley - sorry, Huskies, but I really only spent two years on campus; I'm barely an adopted Bear. I then covered the Oakland Athletics and Raiders for the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

Now I am the new Director of Writing for the University of Washington's athletic department. You will see me writing stories on all things Huskies athletics, including on a live chat during all football games this season. This is the debut of a column that will run each Wednesday highlighting the many remarkable stories among the UW's world-class athletes and staff. (Please bear with the "Unleashed" title - its creators love it.)

Dennison has one of these remarkable stories. I find it all the more so because when I signed up to be a cadet and then an Army officer, in 1989, our nation was at peace. The military was actually downsizing and wondering aloud why we have so much with no war in sight.

Dennison? He was a teenager faced with choosing military versus civilian life with our nation in not one but two wars.

"I mean, that weighed in a lot," he says. "The main factor was I just didn't want to do the five-year service after college football. I wanted to get on with stuff. I don't know, I just felt more close to home in Seattle. I love the decision. I'm really happy here.

"I mean, yeah, no one wants to ... I don't want to be stuck in war. I don't want to go put my life on the line when I am so young. I give all my respect to the people who do put their lives on the line. I have a tremendous amount of respect for them."

I sensed right there - with Dennison standing in the west end zone of Husky Stadium in his white Huskies practice uniform in full pads, carrying his gold helmet and still sweating from practice -- that he is still impacted by the concept of risking his life for his country, three years after he chose not to.

It's a choice tens of thousands of American teenagers - recruited athletes to the service academies, ROTC candidates, high-school students being wooed by enlistment recruiters - wrestle with each year.

"That's one of the things I realized when I went there, all these young people who have so much going for them are sacrificing their lives for our freedom. It just made me proud, because I couldn't do that, you know?" Dennison said. "Yet there are people my age who were out there in war. It just made me take my hat off to them for being so courageous. It made me gain that much more respect for them, because that could have been me.

"So I have a huge amount of respect to all those people who do that. But that probably wasn't my kind of a thing."

His kind of thing is smashing ball carriers and playing through a balky knee and running Holt's defense for rising program intent on reaching its first bowl game since 2002. Dennison also intent on not just graduating but excelling in the classroom. He's maintained a 3.2 GPA at Washington in communications, no small feat given the time commitments for a Division I athlete. He wants to be a broadcast journalist, or a sports agent.

He is still honored West Point wanted him.

"Yeah, it's an honor. I take pride in my academics, for sure," Dennison says. "I realize that football doesn't last. You have to have a good education. So as much time and effort that I have to take for school work, I'll do it.

"I put a lot of work into high school, and it's paid off."

« Track | Main Index | Archives | Volleyball »

RSS Feed