When the pandemic began almost a year ago, the University of Washington had a big but bad team. Even a pair of eventual first-round NBA draft picks up front couldn’t prevent the Huskies from finishing last in the Pac-12 Conference.

So how did fourth-year coach Mike Hopkins fix this?

He didn’t.

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This could have been a fairly powerful University of Washington football team. Then the pandemic hit, spring practice was scrubbed, everything shut down for a while and the regular season now begins rather than ends in November.

Oh, yeah, 10 players with eligibility remaining have left the Husky program once the 2019 Apple Cup went into the books.

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Ed Pepple did a most amazing thing as the boys' high school basketball coach at affluent Mercer Island, which outsiders have had no problem calling Mercedes Island, for obvious reasons.

For 42 seasons, Pepple took teenage basketball players who were never left wanting for anything -- luxury cars, expensive jeans, breathless water views -- and made them play as if their existences depended on every trip up and down the floor.

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The Mariners are doing a massive makeover, the Seahawks dealt with a pileup of broken running backs and the Huskies and Cougars are, well, rethinking their approach to both football and men’s basketball.

With the generous opening provided by these traditional headliner teams in 2019, welcome to Seattle, a certifiable soccer and softball town.

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LAS VEGAS -- The Washington football team sure knows how to throw a farewell party. It was one thoughtful gift after another in Chris Petersen's final hour.

On a cool night in the Nevada desert, the Huskies presented their departing coach with an aggressive defense. They handed him an equally efficient offense. Everything came in a big box with a bow on top.

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Down to the final minute they went, Gonzaga and Washington trading big plays and clutch shots. They had the crowd roaring, standing, jumping and calling for more. On Sunday night, a percolating Alaska Airlines Arena was the place to be, not in front of a TV set somewhere watching the Seahawks get manhandled.

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Fans were clamoring for change. University of Washington players looked beaten down as the losses piled up. The coach tried to remain resolute as his Huskies football program tapered off, dropped five games in an uncharacteristic dip.

That aptly describes what's taking place right now in Montlake. It also applies to the 1988 season.

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At 1:22 a.m., the ordeal came to an end.

Husky Stadium, the scene of one of the most unusual Washington football games in its storied history, emptied out early Sunday morning not unlike some university nightclub or frat party at closing time. Senses were deadened. Hangovers were coming.

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If Gardner Minshew only could have taken a snow day, there’s no telling what else he could have done.

Breanna Stewart was good for all seasons—regular and post—and it showed with a championship.

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The Apple Cup, a college football game held following Thanksgiving with its decidedly Northwest theme, compels normal people to dress up in garish crimson or purple fashion ensembles, drive 300 miles through dubious mountain-pass conditions to a designated stadium and sit in cold, rain, snow and darkness to watch the spectacle play out.

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In the final Husky Stadium game of the season, the Washington football team said goodbye to 23 of coach Chris Petersen’s earliest and most accomplished recruits, hello to elite LT Trey Adams and slammed the door in Oregon State’s face.

The pregame senior ceremony lasted far longer than any suspense over the outcome. So did Adams’ welcome return from injury purgatory.

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The seventh-ranked Washington football team went toe to toe with No. 17 Oregon for 59 minutes and 57 seconds in a classic at Autzen Stadium in Eugene Saturday, losing several key players along the way but somehow putting itself in position for a hugely satisfying victory. Unfortunately for the Huskies, their foot failed them.

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Six-plus years ago, Michael Bennett was not a Sports Star of the Year candidate­ -- he was barely recognizable to the Seattle sports fan. He was an undrafted, unwanted rookie defensive lineman, dropped from the Seahawks roster at midseason without playing a down. There were no protests.

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Overtime wasn’t necessary. An onside kick wasn’t needed. A fake field goal? Save it for another Sunday.

At Benaroya Hall Wednesday night, the Seahawks played it straight this time and came away conventional and convincing winners at the MTR Western Sports Star of the Year Awards.

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For a change, Russell Wilson didn’t have to scramble. Usually quarterbacks do at Seattle’s Sports Star of the Year event.

Between winning an NFC Championship at home and a coming Super Bowl trip to New Jersey -- and already the toast of the town -- the Seahawks’ Wilson was a logical choice, yet a rare quarterback winner in receiving the men’s Star award at the 79th annual awards show sponsored by MTR Western.

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Something had to be done about Husky Stadium. If not, the University of Washington football program was going to further decay, possibly suffer unprecedented failure.

In 2004, Keith Gilbertson, already fired as the Huskies head coach with only the Apple Cup left to play, made this frank and rather startling assessment over dinner and drinks at a restaurant not far from the stadium.

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Peller Phillips died in Seattle on Feb. 18 from congestive heart failure. He was 72. He lived a full life. Yet there was a time when Phillips feared the end for him might come as a young man when he wasn’t looking, in a sinister and brutal manner, at the hands of some shadowy Mafia figure.

Phillips forever will be known as the centerpiece of one of the city’s worst and most theatrical sports scandals: A Seattle University basketball player who stood accused -- and was quietly exonerated -- of point-shaving in an obscure game at the behest of the Chicago underworld.

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It was so easy for everyone to get along when the Washington and Gonzaga college basketball programs weren't very good. The coaches knew each other, related to each other and regularly commiserated with each other over beers about their respective rebuilding projects.

Finally, they concluded: Why don't we play each other annually in a friendly rivalry?

So eager to make this happen and accommodate their cross-state buddies, the Pac-10 Huskies, with the upper hand in bargaining power, easily could have insisted on two-for-one, home-and-away scheduling with the mid-major school from Spokane and the West Coast Conference. But they generously settled for alternating sites. Everyone was so agreeable, so cordial.
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