Washington gets chance to join big stage

Invite if it wins vs. Stanford

seattle» Chris Petersen would like this to be all about what David Shaw has done in building Stanford into the class of the Pac-12 Conference.

“Stanford’s an awesome program. I’ll start with that — program,” Washington’s coach said this week. “This isn’t just an awesome team. They’ve had an awesome program for a while now. They know how to do it.”

In reality, this is all about No. 10 Washington when the Huskies (4-0, 1-0 Pac-12) face No. 7 Stanford on Friday night. Now in his third season in charge at Washington, is Petersen ready to have the Huskies enter the national conversation the same way his Boise State teams did when they were at their peak?

Because if the Huskies knock off Stanford (3-0, 2-0) and take command of the Pac-12 North race, they won’t just be in contention for a conference crown. Washington would immediately join a loftier conversation.

This is a rare opportunity for Washington. It’s just the fourth matchup of AP top10 teams ever at Husky Stadium and the first since the second-ranked Huskies were taken down by No. 7 Nebraska 19 years ago.

It comes with all the trappings of a big game that have become standard for Stanford: prime-time national television audience; sellout crowd; star players all over the field.

“Obviously, it would be kind of ignorant to say they’re not the team to beat a little bit right now in the Pac-12,” Washington quarterback Jake Browning said.

No player is likely to shine brighter than Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, who was “held” to only 109 yards rushing by Washington last year, but made up for the lack of running production by catching five passes for 112 yards and a touchdown, and having 79 yards in kick returns to finish with exactly 300 all-purpose yards in the 31-14 win.

McCaffrey is coming off a relatively quiet performance in last week’s comeback win over UCLA, rushing for 138 yards but only catching two passes for 13 yards.

“We are unbelievably spoiled that when this kid doesn’t get 300 yards of total offense we say he got bottled up,” Shaw said.

The bigger concern for Stanford is who will be missing. The Cardinal will be without starting cornerbacks Quenton Meeks and Alijah Holder, starting wide receiver Francis Owusu and starting fullback Daniel Marx.