Gaskin’ leads Washington past Southern Miss in Dallas

What the win means for Washington: While it shouldn’t be a big deal for a Pac-12 team to beat a Conference USA team – even one that won nine games – considering how terrible Washington was in its bowl game a year ago, concluding the season with a W is significant.

The Huskies rely on a pair of talented freshmen to lead the way on offense.

As the divide increases between the haves of the Power 5 Conferences and the have-nots of the Gang of 5 Conferences, bowl match-ups are a spotlight opportunity for G5 teams to stick it to their higher-esteemed football brethren. Gaskin put in the finest season by a freshman in his school’s history, rushing for 1,121 yards and 10 touchdowns after not fully taking over as the featured ball carrier until the fifth game of the season.

The Southern Miss Golden Eagles have emerged from several years as being an also ran to reaching the championship of the CUSA. In the receiving end, Jaydon Mickens and Joshua Perkins are combined for 1,067 yards and five touchdowns. “They’ve got a really good football team and are really playing their best football now”. They didn’t know they were going to lose their best and most experienced offensive lineman two weeks before the season opener. “Whenever you have a freshman quarterback, it just takes a while to gel”.

“They have one of the most prolific offenses in the country right now”, Petersen said.

Washington’s stingy defense against Southern Miss’ offense with a 4,000-yard passer and two 1,000-yard rushers. The only other team to accomplish those numbers was the 2008 Oklahoma squad. Nick Mullens completed 63.4 percent of his passes for 4,145 yards and 36 touchdowns against 12 interceptions.

But Gaskin burst for 86 yards on the next play from scrimmage, the Huskies forced a 3-and-out on USM’s next possession, and UW led 41-24 before the Golden Eagles scored again. Jalen Richard and Ito Smith are only the second set of Southern Miss teammates to rush for 1,000 yards in the same season – the last were running back Sammy Winder and quarterback Reggie Collier in 1981. “I mean a really good team when you watch all their tapes and what they’re doing”. However, the Golden Eagles have faced off with Washington’s head coach, Chris Petersen.

The Golden Eagles play a team that ranked atop the Pac-12 in scoring defense (17.8), three full points ahead of No. 2 Stanford, and also in total defense (349.9).

Huskies coach Chris Petersen has coached four games against Southern Miss, all between 2007-13 while he was at Boise State.

“We played Mississippi State to open up the year, and I thought, ‘Okay, this will be a barometer of where we’re at.’ Now, we didn’t win, but we proved we could play and we could compete”, Monken said.