An interesting Pac-12 battle is set for Thursday night, as the Washington Huskies host the Stanford Cardinal as underdogs.
The Cardinal, who are 3-0 on the season, are favored by a touchdown for the game held at CenturyLink Field, which is also home to the Seattle Seahawks. It should be a terrific atmosphere at this conference tilt.
The start to the season for Stanford couldn’t have gone much better.
After grinding out a 20-17 win over San Jose State in their opener, the Cardinal then trounced Duke 50-13 before a heavyweight Pac-12 matchup with USC two weeks ago.
In a game that was back and forth all night, the Cardinal emerged as the 21-14 victors over the Trojans, beating their rivals for the fourth straight season.
On a night when Josh Nunes struggled to find consistency against the USC pass defense, Stepfan Taylor picked up the slack in a big way, rushing for 153 yards and a touchdown on 27 carries. Nunes did manage to throw a couple touchdown scores, one to Zach Ertz and the other to Taylor, who tacked on an additional 60 yards on five receptions.
Stanford heads into this weekday game with two weeks of rest, as does Washington, which is coming off a 52-13 win over Portland State in week three of the season.
The Huskies’ only loss has come at the hands of LSU (in Tiger Stadium), so we can’t read too much into that when making our college football picks.
This game against Stanford begins a stretch of games in which Washington will then play Oregon, USC, Arizona and Oregon State. Yikes. A win over the Cardinal would do wonders for their confidence ahead of that schedule, but that’s going to be much easier said than done.
