Inside The Huskies

Huskies Hit the Road, Seek Elusive Cross Country Victory

All but one Big Ten team traveling multiple time zones has lost so far.

Dan Raley

Jacob Bandes provides a heavy pass rush against Northwestern.
Jacob Bandes provides a heavy pass rush against Northwestern. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Last season, the longest flight in Pac-12 play for the Washington football team was three hours to Tucson to play Arizona and Jedd Fisch.

On Thursday afternoon, the Fisch-led Huskies boarded a chartered Alaska jet that would take them on one of their shortest road trips to old-school Big Ten country -- traveling three hours and 40 minutes to Iowa.

It's a new world order for the UW, which will try to extend program momentum generated by a big win over Michigan at home while understanding that almost no one in the conference has been able to figure how to survive a cross-country trip.

Nine of 10 Big Ten teams, according to CFB Kings, have lost this season while traveling two or more time zones to play a league opponent, with only Indiana making a breakthrough in beating UCLA 42-13 at the Rose Bowl.

"It's just another game is the way I see it," Husky defensive tackle Jacob Bandes said.

Brave talk, indeed.

Yet the UW will deal with a 9 a.m. PT game on Saturday that's such a dramatic change for everyone's time clock that Fisch held practice at that enlightened hour on Wednesday and Thursday to try and get his guys adjusted to football with their morning cup of coffee.

Junior tight end Keleki Latu prefers to take a cerebral approach to this challenge of battling time zones as well as Big Ten brutes.

"It's definitely fun going down to the East Coast and experiencing like new environments," he said.

Still, even with the Huskies arriving in Iowa a day earlier than usual, the last time we looked there's no cure for jet jag.

Plus a game such as this, deep in one of the Midwest states, tends to be all that anyone talks about in that region all week and the stadium, in this case with a 69.250 capacity, turns into one of Iowa's largest cities for three hours. Iowa City, for that matter, boasts a 75,233 population.

The Huskies have one test run, seeing the sights of New Jersey and coming home with a frustrating 21-18 loss to Rutgers two weeks ago. Now they're one time closer, looking to overcome plenty of obstacles.

"There's a lot of mental skills to go into that environment and not be full of emotion and focus on what we have to do," Latu said.

If the Huskies figure it out, the rest of the Big Ten will want them to seek a patent and share the solution.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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