Tyreese Breshers Retires, Recruiting Update

UW sophomore power forward, Tyreese Breshers, retired today due to medical reasons. He spent his redshirt freshman year recovering from a shin surgery that involved inserting a metal rod through his patella tendon and into his shin…which doesn’t sound like ice cream and salt water taffy.

Tyreese was an enforcer in the paint – blockin’ a grip like his name was Dolemite.

Unfortunately, the shin surgery led to knee problems which led to conditioning issues, but Breshers persevered and had his best game of the season in the Pac-10 championship against Cal – scoring six points and blocking four shots.

This “poor man’s Jon Brockman” is going to be sorely missed for his physical presence down low. Breshers joins Elston Turner (Texas A&M) and Clarence Trent (Seattle U.) as Huskies that won’t be returning to the team next season.




Husky Nation appreciated your toughness, Tyreese.

The Huskies now have room for five players in the 2011 class which currently has one commitment from Rainier Beach shooting guard, Hikeem Stewart.

According to Scout.com, the Huskies have extended offers to seven players in the ’11 class: shooting guards Stewart, Jabari Brown, Tony Wroten, and Brett Kingma and power forwards Angelo Chol, Norvel Pelle, and Jernard Jerreau.

Clearly the Huskies will be bringing in some pretty fresh names next year. Jernard Jerreau? The guy sounds like an athletic, aquatic explorer…which is exactly what Romar has been lacking the last few years.




Beastin’ with Jermaine




UW wide receiver Jermaine Kearse picked up the Pac-10 offensive player of the week award after shredding Syracuse for 179 yards and 3 touchdowns.

With the Huskies down 10-6, Kearse scored three straight touchdowns of 5, 57, and 28 yards to put UW up 27-10. The 6’2 WR is 2nd in the nation with 287 receiving yards and tied for 3rd with 4 touchdowns.

A big matchup next week will be Kearse going up against acclaimed Nebraska cornerback, Prince Amukamara. Watch out, Prince – King Kearse has a nice ring to it.

(Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)




Bruisin’ the ‘Cuse

I’m not gonna lie, TheDawgDude had to be talked off his roof when Syracuse went up 10-0. While I never doubted that the Huskies would come back and win (I swear! Got the tweets to prove it!), the miserable special teams play and defensive breakdowns were just too unbearable to watch (seriously, special teams/d-line coach Johnny Nansen should be thrilled that he still has a job).




But then the offense finally found some rhythm, Jermaine Kearse effectively took over the game (179 yards and 3 TDs…ridiculous) and the Dawgs rolled to a 41-20 win. While Jake wasn’t phenomenal, his stat line was: 22/33 for 289 yards, 4 TDs and no INTs.




That vaunted, shit-talking Syracuse defense got exposed for what it is: a below average BCS defense that looks better due to the weak conference it plays in (Big East). I think it’s safe to say that Chandler (or is it Channing? I’m not sure, I didn’t hear his name called all game…) Jones knows Jake Locker’s name now – but just in case, Jake was the guy that beat you like you stole something, Chanford.




While the Huskies were far from perfect, they showed a lot of moxie battling out of a 10-0 hole in a game that was an absolute must-win. A slow start like that simply cannot happen next week against Nebraska though. But we’ll get to those corn-eating meth-heads later in the week.

Right now it’s time to savor this win and get back to fantasizing about a decent bowl game. Speaking of which, I may have over-savored it last night – apologies for the delayed post.




Go Dawgs!

Photos by AP Photo/Elaine Thompson and Getty Images/Otto Greule Jr.




Syracuse Prediction

34-16. Syracuse is a BCS team after all and have been playing quite a bit better under second-year coach, Doug Marrone. But quarterback Ryan Nassib is making his second career start and will no doubt be jolted by the raucous environment of Husky Stadium.




The Orange have a solid running back in Delone Carter who could have a decent day on the ground if he’s half as good at carrying the football as he is at punching snowball-throwing kids in the face.

Nice “zero tolerance assault policy” Syracuse! But in all fairness, that dude’s face looked pretty wonky to begin with.

While the Orange defense could be a bit stout (as well as overrated), I expect Locker to rack up a number of big plays by finding open receivers downfield. The offense won’t light the world on fire, but should look a lot more explosive than against BYU.

Let’s notch a win and take another step towards a decent bowl game!




Rad.

Get to Know a D-Bag: Syracuse




I had been looking forward to this slanderous post about Syracuse because (unfortunately) I’m intimately familiar with the central New York area, but after reading a few articles on the cockiness of this team that went 4-9 last year, now I’m excited to write the post to smack some sense into these orange-clad idiots.




A pending sexual assault charge may keep Otto the Orange off the Syracuse sideline all year.

First of all, here is an article from The Daily Orange student newspaper proclaiming that the Orange defense is better than Nebraska’s due to its overwhelming “swag.” While this assertion is ridiculous, I’m impressed that a literate attends Syracuse.

The “swag” must come from going 4-9 last year with wins against college football juggernauts Maine, Akron, Northwestern, and Rutgers. And don’t forget the huge opening win this year over the Akron Zips (a team that lost to Temple by 39 in ’09).

It takes a powerful defense to bring down Zippy the mildly depressed kangaroo.

Oh wait, Syracuse had the best rush defense in the Big East last year?! Hold the phone! Congratulations – that’s like being the Tiger Woods mistress with “light” stretchmarks.




Here is a quote from ‘Cuse defensive end, Chandler “Smiles” Jones:

“You have a good quarterback — Jake, or Chris, Locker. Whatever his name is.”

Uh, Chandler, it’s Jake Locker and Chris Polk – they’ll be the guys tag-teaming you in your dreams on Saturday night.

It’s confusing that a team would be cocky after going 14-46 over the last five years – including a four-year, 10-37 run by former coach Greg Robinson.




Robinson’s players failed to respond to his “LOUD NOISES!!!” coaching technique.

If having a terrible football team isn’t enough, Syracuse is located in the country’s icy taint and specializes in crumbling industries, stringy mullets, and balls frozen to legs. The town’s economy would be booming if only one could export sadness.




Syracuse in July.

Syracuse football players coming to play in Seattle are like Cuban baseball players coming to play in America – watch out for defections.

Luckily, fans of the Orange that travel to Husky Stadium won’t get jealous because they won’t be able to see:




For more analysis of the game, check out the UW vs Syracuse preview at SeaTown Sports.




Quick Note before Syracuse Post

While traveling back from Labor Day weekend, I was hit with this unforgivable mistake of a magazine cover:




That’s it, Horizon, you’re done. From now on, I’m only flying on the TheDawgDude.com private jet:







Thanks again for coming to the site and a special thanks to everybody who’ve been telling their friends about TheDawgDude.com and/or buying Husky gear through The Dawg Den and Amazon. You guys rock harder than Syracuse sucks.




Nursing the Hangover

Like recovering from a week-long bender or seeing a naked picture of Courtney Love (that your friend emailed you under the guise of Bar Refaeli), the hangover from the BYU loss has nearly lifted after three days (I didn’t link to the Courtney Love pic because I’m not a monster).

Obviously the team didn’t perform as well as we wanted, but hopefully a lot of that poor play was due to BYU being a more formidable opponent than we thought – case in point, the Cougars are now ranked #24 in the USA Today Top 25. It’s also comforting that none of the victorious BYU players got laid after the game.




“I can offer you a firm handshake, light pecking, or maybe if you really play your cards right, a through-your-football-pants handy.”

Now it’s time to focus on the Syracuse Orange and their whack ass nickname, mascot, and hole of a town they crawled out of (believe me, I spent way too much time in that area).

“Get to Know a D-Bag: Syracuse” will be released soon, but just to whet your appetite, here are some highlights from the last time we beat their ass (DISCLAIMER: the first 10 seconds of the video could make your eyes bleed, but you’ll be fine after that):

Oh, and a few more clicks on TheDawgDude.com’s Husky highlight video wouldn’t hurt either.

Not Quite There Yet

Well, this just sucks. It was pretty clear from the beginning of the game that Washington was the more talented team on the field, but brutal mistakes (mostly on special teams) crippled the Huskies. I don’t want to be overly negative here, but I’ll just lay out my thoughts:

1) Special teams. Holy shit, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen special teams this terrible throughout an entire game. Besides Folk’s 54-yard field goal, this was an absolute embarrassment. Roughing the kicker? A snap into the endzone? Multiple follies on kickoff returns? Johnny Nansen should be done as special teams coach as far as I’m concerned – stick to D-line and recruiting.

And Chris Polk shouldn’t take a kickoff return for the rest of the year. He shouldn’t have been back there in the first place – what the fuck is your starting RB doing returning kickoffs? Show me that in the NFL. This one is on Coach Sark.

Figure it out, guys – this one was an F.

2) Jake, if you’re a legit NFL prospect, you gotta play a lot better than this. Overthrows, underthrows, and delayed decisions all came back today. This looked like the Locker from early ’08. Though to be fair, his receivers weren’t helping him out much either.

3) Sark’s playcalling. It was great on the initial drive – that handoff to Callier on 3rd and 8 was brilliant. But why did we abandon Polk for huge stretches of the game? Clearly the designed runs for Locker were not working (11 carries for 29 yards – 2.6 ypc) while Polk was having a lot of success running the ball (16 carries for 92 yards – 5.8 ypc).

At least Husky Hero, Gavin Keefe, brought his A game to Provo.

It just blows when UW has more talent than an opponent, but can’t figure out how to beat them. Obviously the players need to execute better, but it’s on the coaches to devise a gameplan to win against a less talented team. The road monkey is most certainly still on the backs of this UW team – and it only gets tougher with upcoming road games against USC, Arizona, and Oregon.

Am I the only one who would pay two grand to kick this dork in the face?

While this was a major wasted opportunity, we (and I’m mostly talking to myself here) have to keep the season in perspective and realize that a bowl game and a respectable year are still very attainable. The pipe dream of a 10+ win season might not happen, but the 8-win season that I wanted before this shart of a game is definitely still possible.

Here’s to slaughtering Syracuse next week and getting this awful, Brighamite taste out of our mouths.

Get to Know a D-Bag: BYU

 

Brigham Young University: the land of no sex, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, facial hair, candy, hugs, fun, or independent thought. Don’t let this lovable kitten fool you – these folks will damn you to hell while sitting in your own living room wearing a pair of $8 slacks and a grin from ear-to-ear.

But we’ll get back to them later. The football team has won 10+ games in each of the last four seasons. Bronco Mendenhall is 49-15 (including 25-5 at home) in his five years of running the program. BYU is a well-coached and disciplined team that almost always gives opponents a good game. 

It doesn’t hurt that the “Notre Dame of the West” has a team full of players that are two years older on average than their opponents. After BYU players get back from their two-year mission of harassing heathens around the globe, they are physically and mentally more mature (all that browbeating hardens one’s soul) than their younger counterparts.

Oddly enough, 63 year-old Romney is younger than many BYU players.

The 2010 Cougars are not as strong as they could be after BYU all-time leading rusher, Harvey Unga, removed himself from the school after breaking the university’s Honor Code. BYU then chose not to reinstate him. So what did Unga, one of the best football players ever at BYU, do to get booted from the school? Steal a laptop? Marijuana possession? Cursing out the coach on his Facebook account? Nope, that’s Oregon territory. Unga did the unthinkable: had sex with his longtime girlfriend.

I know what you’re thinking: kicking him out of school is nothing – we should give him a 20-year prison stay. 30, even. This consenting adult had sexual relations with another consenting adult after being engaged in a three-year relationship. Fuck jail – obviously Utah still has the death penalty.

But to be fair, it’s situations like Unga’s that makes Mormonism my third favorite cult behind Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Dividians. And the best part is Utah leads the nation in porn consumption.

When Coach Sark attended BYU, he also had some issues with the Honor Code – reportedly not being a big fan of the mandatory daily shave (for some reason this link doesn’t work with Firefox – the Mormons must have added the web browser to their Ban List).

That may be. Luckily we accept other ethnicities into our university. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, Unga is Tongan, but you get my point. Don’t get your chastity belt in a bunch.)

So here’s wishing the Huskies go into Provo on Saturday and kick some BYU ass. Not just for the University of Washington and its fans, but for heathens, pagans, and sinners everywhere.

Go Dawgs!