Stanford puts bad loss in past to prepare for Washington

STANFORD — There are few benefits with playing on a Friday night with one less day of preparation and recovery. For Stanford at least, it’s one less day to dwell on a late loss at Washington State that dealt a blow to the Cardinal’s hope of winning a conference title.

With No. 9 Washington (8-1, 5-1 Pac12, No. 9 CFP) coming to town to face Stanford (6-3, 5-2) on Friday night, there was little time this week to look back at all that went wrong against the Cougars.

“It’s the best team in the conference coming into our house,” coach David Shaw said. “We don’t have time to wallow. We don’t have time to lament about what happened last Saturday. We have to get ready to go.”

If the Cardinal are going to be able to bounce back, they will need to get a much more efficient performance on offense behind freshman quarterback K.J. Costello and hope Bryce Love is fully recovered from the sprained ankle that sidelined him for one game and limited him against the Cougars.

They also will need to play much better defensively than they did a year ago against the Huskies, when they fell behind 30-0 on the way to a 44-6 loss.

“All it does is just motivate you not to repeat that and come out stronger,” cornerback Quenton Meeks said. “We came out flat last year when we played them up there. They definitely wanted the game more than us. That’s what it came down to. We played flat and it showed in the results.”

Friday night road games haven’t been kind to the Pac-12’s top teams. Southern California had its hopes for an undefeated season dashed back in September when the Trojans lost on a short week at Washington State. The Cougars were bitten by the bug two weeks later in a 37-3 loss at California. Now the Huskies need to avoid the trap this week to keep hopes alive for a playoff bid.

“We all want to feel sorry for ourselves and can’t believe we’re having to do this. Then I look at the Seahawks and the (Cardinals) and I’m fine,” coach Chris Petersen said, referring to a Thursday night NFL game between Seattle and Arizona.