'You've always got to believe': Washington is one win away from a national championship
A most thrilling victory over Texas sends the Huskies somewhere they've never been.
NEW ORLEANS — Believers or not, even some of Washington’s most dedicated supporters seemed gobsmacked in the moment. How else do you process something you’ve never seen before? Arms wearing purple shirts clasped hands over heads, mouths agape, some with tears streaming as they bounced about the Superdome turf and awaited another confetti party. But this one felt different. Oh, yes, the Washington Huskies celebrated their Pac-12 title game victory over Oregon. But that game ended with UW kneeling out the clock. Kind of anti-climactic, no?
So a convincing victory in a College Football Playoff semifinal simply would not do. It had to be like this, Monday night lurching toward Tuesday morning in New Orleans, one second on the clock, Texas snapping the ball for the third consecutive time from Washington’s 13-yard line, the Huskies white-knuckling a six-point lead.
They had outplayed the Longhorns for much of this Sugar Bowl. They had chances to put it away, to run more clock, to turn a two-score lead into three. It should not surprise you that they did not, assuming you bore witness to the rest of this team’s season.
“We were playing so good. It just would be a shame if it ended that way, you know?” senior linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio said. “Until triple-zeroes, you’ve always got to believe.”
So once again — again, again, again — Washington sidestepped a most gutting defeat by making one last play, Elijah Jackson rising to bat away Quinn Ewers’ fade ball to Adonai Mitchell, the coda to this 37-31 victory that sends UW somewhere it has never been.
The Washington Huskies are going to play for an outright national championship against No. 1 Michigan next Monday in Houston.
They will not be favored. They will not care.
They are one victory from perfection, one win shy of the mountaintop in coach Kalen DeBoer’s second season, one game away from chiseling a spot next to the 1991 Huskies in the hearts and minds of a fan base that doesn’t get to do this all that often.