Chris Petersen will have a chance to improve his unblemished record in the Fiesta Bowl as UW learned it will face No. 9 Penn State, clinching the final New Years Six bowl selection.
The Huskies (10-2, 6-2) inched passed undefeated Central Florida and Stanford, who lost 31-28 to USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game, for the right to face the Nittany Lions.
"I can’t tell you how excited and honored we are to come back here. There’s no better bowl," Petersen said in a teleconference with reporters Sunday. "When we heard today that we were coming back, there was a lot of jumping around and smiling faces, until we found out that it was James Franklin’s Penn State Nittany Lions.
"Then we said, uh-oh, be careful what you wish for."
Petersen won his first Fiesta Bowl following the 2006 season after calling a Statue of Liberty in overtime to defeat then-No. 8 Oklahoma 43-42, ending his first season as head coach at Boise State with a 12-0 record.
In 2009 Petersen capped off a 14-0 season with a 17-10 victory over TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. This time around Petersen is leading his team to a bowl game with 10 wins in consecutive years and one of the nations best run defenses.
While Franklin has not yet turned on the tape of Washington's defense for his team, yet, he's already read up on the uniqueness of the Huskies unit.
"It’s funny because I read an article about Washington’s defense I thought was really good a couple of weeks ago," Franklin said, "that I forwarded to all of our coaches about how they play nickel and how they’ve had different guys playing at nickel position."
Referring to sophomore cornerback Myles Bryant and (presumably) Jordan Miller, who is out for the season due to injury, the PSU coach added noting the Huskies success in the secondary despite having various height's.
As a unit Franklin noted the comparisons, again, to the local Seattle Seahawks who also focus heavily on having a strong defense.
"They are big. They are strong. They are physical. They are fast," Franklin said of the Huskies defense. "And they take a lot of pride in how they play defense there, them and the Seattle Seahawks. They’ve got it rolling on the defensive side of the ball and obviously doing a great job on offense as well."
