It's pandemonium in Seattle on Saturday night, baby! The signature game of Week 7 absolutely lived up to the hype. ESPN's College GameDay was on the Banks of Lake Washington to see No. 8 Oregon take on No. 7 Washington in a Pac-12 border war. The winner of this game was going to emerge as possibly the favorite to win the Pac-12 (and possibly for the Playoff), as well as see its starting quarterback win the Heisman.
In a clash of the titans, the home team came out on top, as Washington exuded Big Penix Energy unlike anything you have ever seen before in your life. Once again, in the final minutes, Bo Nix played like Bo Nix. You can take the man out of Auburn, but you can never take the Auburn out of the man. Some questionable plays by the Oregon offense allowed for Michael Penix Jr. and Washington to win.
It all came down to a 40-something-yard field goal attempt off the boot of Oregon's Camden Lewis. He did not miss by much, but he certainly did wide right. Washington improved to 6-0 and will probably climb up even higher inside the top 10 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. While I do not anticipate Oregon falling that, the Ducks are going to be a few spots lower than No. 8 by this time tomorrow.
Sean McDonough may be calling the next game airing on ABC, but Tony Castricone's call of the missed field goal was every bit the losing your voice in excitement shrill we love about McDonough.
Somebody had to lose this game, but the cooler heads prevailed much like Oklahoma did over Texas at Red River the weekend prior. We also got a Heisman moment out of Penix in his biggest victory yet.
Listen to Washington's call of Oregon's missed game-tying FG attempt
What I think gets lost in this game is how much these two teams hate each other. Oregon may have the Strife Aquatic in-state with Oregon State, but the Ducks rarely mark the Beavers as their equal. They view the Huskies as such. Although the Apple Cup is one of the better rivalry games of Thanksgiving Weekend, U-Dub does tend to look down at Washington State like Oregon does OSU.
So to get this win in their final meeting as Pac-12 members before they jump ship with UCLA and USC to join the Big Ten as their West Coast division, you have to be ecstatic for Kalen DeBoer's program. He is only in year two at Washington, but he has the Huskies playing every bit as good as they were under Chris Petersen previously. It goes to show just how atrocious of a head coach Jimmy Lake was.
Ultimately, Washington still has so far to go to even get to Las Vegas. The Huskies may have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Ducks, but Oregon is not out of it either. The Ducks need to win out and maybe have a few things go their way to make the College Football Playoff. If you want to see what their pathway looks like, just take a look at what Texas has ahead of them after losing Red River.
For the second consecutive week, the marquee game of the Saturday slate absolutely did it for us.
