AP Photo/George Frey

Well. That first game didn’t exactly go as planned, now did it? Last week’s much-anticipated contest in Provo, Utah, pitting UW against BYU ended with the Huskies losing to the Cougars (and that better be the last time we write that phrase this year) 23-17. Now UW happily turns its attention to the Syracuse Orange, a recently moribund program that visits Husky Stadium this Saturday at 4:00.

But before we get to what is this week’s good news, let’s wallow a bit in what happened against BYU. While UW looked like the much better team during the first quarter of last week’s game, the Huskies were thwarted by a bevy of mistakes as the contest progressed. Jake Locker, for one, showed none of the improvement to his accuracy that he was supposed to have made over the off-season–he completed just 20 of his 37 pass attempts and a number of his most inaccurate passes came on third and fourth down, when Heisman Trophy candidates are supposed to step up and make plays.

Of course, it wasn’t all his fault, as a number of those incompletions can be blamed on the receivers, notably All-Pac-10 hopeful Jermaine Kearse, who whiffed on a few key catches. Also, the special teams play was (with the exception of kicker Erik Folk) abysmal, as the team gave up an early safety with a poor snap on a punt and kick returner Chris Polk twice pinned the Huskies deep in their own territory by botching his catches. And don’t get us started on head coach Sarkisian’s play-calling, since it would only lead to painful flashbacks to last year’s Notre Dame debacle.

But the 2010 season is not lost. One wonderful advantage of having a head coach you can believe in (unlike, say, a certain golf-obsessed anal retentive) is that hope is hard to kill. UW now gets to play the last home opener of the Locker era against a team that has a cumulative record of 14-45 over the past five years. Like the UW, Syracuse is another once-proud program that has fallen on hard times, but the Orange have had a more difficult time rebuilding to this point. However, Syracuse does boast one of the better defenses in the Big East Conference and is coming off of a big win (*titter*) against mighty Akron. The Huskies are still double-digit favorites heading into the game and should win fairly easily. Plus it would be nice to get a confidence-building victory before facing off against Nebraska and USC in the following two contests, which means Sark should have the team properly motivated to avoid a letdown.

So tune in to FSN (Hey! A channel people actually get!) at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and watch the Huskies try to get the season back on track.

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