Score one for fun in the sun.
Or better yet, score 51, which is how many points the playboy University of Washington Huskies hung on the teetotaling Michigan State Spartans in winning the Aloha Bowl in rousing fashion, 51-23, Thursday.That's the image the two teams carried into the Christmas Day game, anyway. The Huskies were more than happy to tell you they were doing as much enjoying as they could; the Spartans countered that they were going to make Washington pay for that good time with something worse than a bad hangover.
But then the Spartans showed just how prepared they were by fumbling on the first play of the game - the first of their five turnovers on the day. That first fumble led to a 33-yard touchdown by Rashaan Shehee two plays later and started UW's highest-scoring bowl game since beating Hawaii, 53-13, in the 1938 Pineapple Bowl in Honolulu.
"They talked all week long about how prepared they were and that they went in early each night and weren't going out partying," said UW linebacker Jason Chorak. "Well, maybe they should have been going out with us a little bit, you know?
"Everybody was talking about how much we were enjoying ourselves. Maybe they did see us walking tipsy down the street. But hey, everyone came and put their two hours of hard work in each day and (UW coach Jim Lambright) shut us down the three days before the game (with a curfew)."
With the victory, the Huskies finished the season 8-4 and surely will move up quite a few notches from their No. 21 spot in The Associated Press poll.
And with the victory, the Huskies put a stop to all the questions about the team's character and Lambright's future that had arisen during a three-game losing streak to end the regular season that had sent the Huskies to Honolulu in the first place.
Lambright called the game a "truly big" victory and athletic director Barbara Hedges reiterated that a new contract for Lambright is close to being finished.
Lambright had never doubted he was doing the right thing in giving his team a longer leash than did Michigan State coach Nick Saban. Lambright said he felt sure the team's seniors were leading the players in the right way.
They certainly did on the field Thursday as virtually every senior starter stood out:
- Shehee returned from missing the last three games - all, not so coincidentally, UW losses - to show how important he was by rushing for an Aloha Bowl record 193 yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries. He was named as the game's most valuable player.
- Safety Tony Parrish dominated defensively, intercepting two passes, including a tipped throw that he ran back 56 yards for a touchdown with only 18 seconds left in the second quarter that put Washington ahead 31-10 at halftime.
- Receiver Fred Coleman caught two first-half touchdown passes from Brock Huard, the second on an incredible diving grab in the front of the end zone early in the second quarter.
- And junior Olin Kreutz, playing his last game as a Husky after declaring earlier this month he will enter the NFL draft, led an offensive line that powered the UW to 298 rushing yards and allowed Huard all kinds of time to throw.
"I think we showed that when everyone is healthy that we are still a top-10 team," Kreutz said.
Saban, though, hardly conceded the Huskies anything after the loss.
"I don't really understand it," he said. "I think anyone on the island would say that we were more focused than any team that's ever played in this game."