Sarkisian emphasizing finishing on the road in the 4th

During Steve Sarkisian’s first year at Washington, the Huskies failed to win a game on the road. 

Sarkisian wants to see this year’s team win road games in the fourth quarter than got away last season (Notre Dame 37-30 loss, Arizona State 24-17 loss, UCLA 24-23 loss).

Coach Sark says, “Part of it is the rallying cry of ‘finish.’ I think all in all, that has paid dividends for us. We’re seeing it in practice. We’re finishing like crazy. We have more energy at the end of practice than we do at the beginning.” 

“I think it’s more of the mindset that we have going on the road and the way we do it and the style in which we do it and how we approach it. I’m not as concerned about what happened before we got here on the road. I do know what happened to us last year on the road and some varying indifferent situations that happened in those games. And they were all different. So we’ve addressed that in a sense of how we are going to handle it when we get faced with it again this fall. To me, I feel like we should be confident. We’ve got a veteran football team that has been in hostile environments and played really well, BUT now we’ve got to finish. I think that’s been the really rallying cry…it’s about finishing.” 

“I think you have to continue to do your job, continuing to do thing rights. I think one of the natural things in the 4th quarter is you try too hard. ‘I gotta make a play’ or ‘I gotta make the call,’ or things of that nature and that’s when you make mistakes and that’s how you get beat. You blow a coverage. You make a bad call…a poor judgment, a poor decision, you force a football from the QB, and that’s how you get beat. So the challenge is to stick to the plan, execute really, really well, and play with great effort. If we can do that in the 4th quarter, we’ll have really good success.”

Washington travels to Provo, Utah to play BYU on Saturday.

{youtube}8mlhZOhAhUQ{/youtube}