UW Football | Second-half slumps are disturbing trend

The Washington Huskies left the field at halftime Saturday night locked in a 10-10 tie with the UCLA Bruins, then retreated into the Rose Bowl's visitors locker room, refurbished this season and called by some the best in the Pac-10.

Maybe, however, the Huskies enjoyed their stay in that locker room just a bit too much. Because when play resumed in the third quarter, it was only UCLA that seemed ready to go, outscoring the Huskies 14-0 en route to an eventual 44-31 win.

For the Huskies, though, UCLA's second-half domination underscored a disturbing trend.

While UW has outscored its opponents 55-29 in the first half this season, it has been outscored 70-56 in the second half. In the last two games, UW has been outscored 64-28 in the second half. The Huskies have also been outscored 28-0 in the third quarter of the past three games, and outgained 381-183.

"I'm not sure why that's going on right now but we definitely need to fix it," said senior receiver Anthony Russo.

In fact, it's a habit that dates to last season. Washington has been tied or ahead at the half in its last six games but has won only three, and was tied or ahead at the half eight times total last season, winning four. UW also rallied from a halftime deficit to beat UCLA in 2006, the only such comeback in the Tyrone Willingham era.

Willingham's critics inevitably point to a lack of adjustments by coaches at halftime as the problem.

Willingham says it's not that simple.

"You have to make adjustments," he said. "That's what the game constantly is. But a lot of times adjustments are taking place as the game goes on every minute. You don't just wait for the 10, 15 minutes you've got at halftime to make those adjustments. You make subtle adjustments [during the game] and some of those ones we make work and some we make don't work. And that's the same thing you can say for the opponent. I don't think UCLA wanted to give up 21 points in the second half nor did we want to give up [34]. It's always a combination of things. It's never just a clear, definitive reason."

Fatigue, for instance, could be a factor as the Huskies don't rotate much at many positions. Willingham said Monday he didn't think his players were tired Saturday, though linebacker E.J. Savannah referred to it after the game, talking specifically about trying to defend UCLA's tailback tandem.

"Our dudes were getting tired, and they stayed fresh," Savannah said.

Other players say the Huskies aren't taking the field in the second half with the same energy as the first half.

"I think we are not coming out fast enough," said cornerback Roy Lewis. "We go in at halftime ahead or tied, and I think we are kind of satisfied with the first half. But we have to realize we have another half to go, and I don't think we are coming out with the same fire and intensity that we have in the first half. The third quarter is when we have to come out and be as aggressive as we were in the first half."

That was a particular problem on defense the last two weeks as Ohio State and UCLA scored on their first possessions of the third quarter to take the lead for good. (To be accurate, UW's offense drove into field goal range on its first possession of the third quarter before missing a field goal.)

Referring to the UCLA game, defensive tackle Jordan Reffett said, "I think maybe they made some adjustments that we didn't adjust to well. I think we were ready to go. But we made some mistakes and they drove the ball down the field right on us, right off the bat."

As Willingham points out, however, the numbers can be parsed several ways. UW, for instance, outscored Syracuse 21-0 in the third quarter of its opener after leading just 14-6 at halftime. The Huskies also had their best-scoring fourth quarter of the season with 21 points against UCLA.

Russo said the Huskies finally started throwing the ball downfield, passing for 153 of its total of 216 yards.

"A lot of teams are starting to play up on Jake [Locker], and they know we are going to run short or intermediate routes because they think that because he's a young guy they think our coach doesn't want to go deep," Russo said. "But we opened up the playbook and it definitely worked, so hopefully the coaches will open it up some more."

Willingham said that he is "looking at everything" to solve the problems of the past two weeks.

"You just keep working at it because it has worked [in the past]," he said. "We have to get ourselves in better positions, and that's the responsibility of the coaches to put ourselves in better positions, and then we have to make better plays. We just have to get it done."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com.