Coach Scott Flory calls the Canada West football standings “a mosh in the middle,” and those gyrations are indeed something to behold.
It means that even with Flory’s University of Saskatchewan Huskies holding a disappointing 1-3 record, they’re flailing around with everybody else, nobody gaining much ground.
Three conference teams are 2-2, two more are 1-3, and they’re all watching the 4-0 Manitoba Bisons up on stage, free of elbows.
“Can West is all over the place,” said Huskies defensive back Katley Joseph, whose team hosts the 2-2 Alberta Golden Bears Friday at 7 p.m.
“That’s one thing about Can West — I do believe it’s the best football in Canada. You can play a team that has a bad record, but they’ll bring that fire and that juice. The reality is, the season’s not done. Everybody knows it, everybody believes it.”
Saskatchewan also knows they have things to fix at the season’s halfway point, starting with a defensive propensity to give up big plays.
They’ve allowed 30-plus yards 10 times this season, including touchdown catches of 34, 45, 43 and 60 yards, and a TD run of 59 yards. They also gave up a 70-yard rush that set up a major, and on one scoring drive during last week’s 38-24 loss to British Columbia, they allowed passes of 30 and 32 yards in quick succession.
“We believe, based on what we’ve done in the past, that we’re one of the top defensive-back groups in the country. It’s definitely disappointing,” said Joseph, who went to training camp with the Saskatchewan Roughriders this spring.
“We don’t want to be a liability, especially when our offence is doing pretty well. We have to step up — everybody, including myself.
“We know we can do it based on what we’ve done, but we’ve got to live in the present.”
The Huskies have allowed 30-plus points in each of their four games this season — losing 37-24 to Manitoba and 33-28 to Regina, beating Calgary 44-40 in overtime, and then losing the aforementioned bout with UBC.
“We’ve got to clean that stuff up, obviously,” Flory said. “A lot of it is the competitive level of this conference. If you have a breakdown, it can be catastrophic, and that’s what we’ve seen. Teams have done a great job of capitalizing on those opportunities against us, and we haven’t made the most of our opportunities to counterpoint.”
All three Huskie losses were on the road, a quirk of the schedule that saw them play at Griffiths Stadium just once during the season’s first half. It means they’ll have a home-heavy second half as they angle for a playoff spot.
“It feels like we’ve played four homecomings in a row, and one of them’s been ours,” Flory said wryly. “It’s a tough go. It’s a tough conference. We’re not complaining about it — that’s our reality.
“We didn’t do enough in the first half of the season to win games, but the commitment level, the effort level … there’s not a waver in the group about that. We know we can handle business here through the back half and set ourselves up.”
Elsewhere in Canada West this weekend, 2-2 UBC plays 1-3 Calgary, and 2-2 Regina takes on unbeaten Manitoba.
Saskatchewan faces an Alberta team that has rushed for more yards than any school in the country so far — 922, an average of 230.5 per contest.
“That’s the No. 1 rushing team in the country,” Flory said. “We know they’re going to come in and run the ball, and we’ve got to be gap-sound in the box. The priority is to stop the run.”
The Huskies will host Manitoba next weekend, and then the league will take a collective bye over Thanksgiving before fighting it out for two final weeks.
“It’s nothing to be proud of, that record,” Joseph said. “For us, it’s about going back to the basics. We know how to win. We’ve won before with this program.
“Keep building, day by day. We definitely have a different perspective on the season, because now it’s win or lose, win or go home. We have that mindset and we’re going to bring more fire into games.”
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