Young Huskies still confident

Asked a few weeks ago about possible concerns with so many young players on the roster, Washington coach Tyrone Willingham turned positive, noting their lack of experience means they also haven't had anything bad happen to them yet in their college careers.

"They are unscarred," Willingham said.

The first blemish on the collective face of the kiddie corps came Saturday night when the Huskies were blasted at Oregon 44-10.

And now, the obvious question seems how do they respond with another ranked team, Brigham Young, next on the docket at noon Saturday at Husky Stadium.

Willingham, however, wasn't worried during his regular Monday meeting with the media.

"It seems awful early to be concerned about the resiliency of our kids," he said. "I think these kids come to play — they focus. I've said all along in our camp they've probably been as consistent a group as we've had in camp so far, so that's [resiliency] not a major concern for me right now."

Players young and old, though, said Monday that keeping the confidence up will be a focus this week.

"I think everybody just has to stay angry," said junior defensive end Daniel Te'o-Nesheim. "And just use that fuel to help you in the next week instead of crawling into a little hole and crying." And that hasn't happened yet, he said.

Redshirt freshman cornerback Quinton Richardson, an O'Dea High graduate who rarely lost in high school, said, "It's kind of a hard adjustment" to losing. Richardson said he noticed after the game that "people's heads are down" but that "we all talked and said we've got to keep doing it in practice, got to work extra harder. We've got a big business team coming in so we've got to pick it up."

Sophomore linebacker Mason Foster vowed that the team will do just that.

"I don't like losing at all, so losing to a team like Oregon at their spot like that is terrible," he said. "I think our defense, our team is a lot better than that, so we just want to show everybody we are a lot better than that. We have to show them. We can't talk about it. We've got to prove it. So we want to prove it to everybody."

One thing players said won't be on their minds this week is the hot-seat-and-growing-hotter-by-the-day status of Willingham.

"It's one game, really," said quarterback Jake Locker. "I don't think there needs to be any kind of panic among anybody, any extra stress on anybody. Like I said before, he's our head coach, he's our leader. We look to him to lead us and he doesn't let it bother him, and we treat it the same way."

Injury update

Locker, who missed much of camp with a hamstring injury, said he came out of the game a little sore, but overall fine.

"I didn't feel as fast as I normally am," he said. "But that's just something that will come with time. It didn't bother me or anything. It didn't catch, it didn't feel sore while I was playing. Another thing is just me being able to trust that I can open it up and sprint like that as I have in the past. I think with time, I think next week I'll be able to regain that."

Willingham said tight end Michael Gottlieb is "probable" for this week, but he will be cautious to make sure that once Gottlieb comes back, he doesn't re-injure it again.

Willingham also said safety Jason Wells, continuing to come back from offseason knee surgery, could be forced to redshirt this season. Wells has two years left to play one season.

Notes

• Asked if the offensive game plan Saturday was too conservative, Willingham said no. "We think we have a good system. I think coach [Tim] Lappano [the offensive coordinator] has put in place a good system. I don't think it was too conservative."

Willingham added, "It's nice to say, 'Let's go ahead and throw the ball down the field.' But if you're not doing a great job of protecting it, you put yourself in a very negative situation. So I don't think it was too conservative. I think we had a lot of things in place, but we weren't able to execute them."

• UW was outscored 30-0 in the second half, seeming to perpetuate a pattern of the past few years. Willingham said part of the problem Saturday was that the team fell behind early while trying to adjust to the speed of the game. "Once we start to play better early, we will start to play better late," he said.

• Asked a different question about the second-half troubles, Willingham said the team just has to "finish games. I just think it was a couple of big plays where the game really got away from us. That's what I saw."

• Asked to assess the play of heralded freshman tailback Chris Polk, held to 19 yards on 14 carries, Willingham pointed first to the offensive line. "I think we've got to block a lot better." He also said "we got to help them coaching-wise to eliminate that eighth, ninth man in the box."

• Willingham also said he thought "the whole football team" took a positive step in how it rallied from the early 14-0 deficit.

"You can very easily get knocked out right then and there," he said. "But our team maintained their poise, maintained their confidence and kept battling back and got us at halftime where we were in what I consider real striking distance, and we played much of the third quarter, probably all the third quarter, within striking distance. But we've got to find a way to get over the top, which we didn't do."