Upset special: UW ranked (No. 24) for first time in 6 years

Even the man who had more of a personal stake in Steve Sarkisian becoming a success at Washington didn't really envision it happening this quickly.

"I thought it would be a little more methodical and take a little longer," said UW athletic director Scott Woodward, who made the somewhat outside-the-box hire of the 35-year-old Sarkisian — who had no head-coaching experience before being named at UW. "Obviously it's a pleasant surprise. That's not to say I have low expectations for coach Sarkisian or the team. I just didn't think it would come this fast."

Few really could have considering that just 10 days ago Washington was still in the throes of a 15-game losing streak that is tied for the longest in Pac-10 history.

But two wins later, including a shocking 16-13 victory over USC on Saturday, UW finds itself back in the Associated Press Top 25.

UW is rated No. 24 this week, the first time it has been ranked since Sept. 28, 2003, when the Huskies were 3-1 in the first year for coach Keith Gilbertson. Washington then lost at UCLA 46-16 to fall out of the rankings, and at home to Nevada the next week, and hasn't been ranked since (UW did get votes on a few occasions but never enough to get in the Top 25).

"You hope for that and you always shoot for that," Woodward said of the quick rise into the rankings. "But the most important thing is to build this with a solid foundation and that is just what he is doing. We are getting our team to play together and to believe and coach is recruiting like a big-time coach (18 commitments, all from high-school players, are already in the books for the Class of 2010) and we are playing like a big-time team. But we've got a lot of ball to play. We are a quarter into the season. There's a lot of football ahead of us. ... I don't want this to be a flash in the pan but a solid foundation and a solid place to go from here."

Considering that only four players who started Saturday are seniors — and only one on offense — the future does seem bright.

But the near future also presents challenges.

The Huskies now enter the toughest stretch of the season with five of the next seven games on the road, beginning with a 6 p.m. contest Saturday at Stanford. And while the Huskies were the darlings of the college-football world after the upset of the Trojans, evidence that life moves on came Sunday when the first Las Vegas odds installed the Huskies as seven-point underdogs against Stanford.

Per Sarkisian's 24-hour rule for celebrating wins, however, Saturday night was spent relishing what might have been the biggest victory for the Huskies at home since beating Miami in 2000.

After handling postgame duties on campus, Woodward and Sarkisian headed to Sarkisian's house with some family members and other coaches and staff members, some of whom had followed Sarkisian to UW from USC where they had all worked for coach Pete Carroll.

Woodward said Sarkisian mixed excitement over the win with attempts to keep it in perspective.

"It was a little of both," Woodward said. "It was a very big deal to him. He respects the game and obviously Pete is his mentor and that's how he approached it. He wanted to beat Pete as bad as Pete wanted to beat him. It was a classic matchup."

And for the skeptics out there — and there remained a few heading into the game given that there were just 61,889 in attendance, fewer than five of seven home games played last season — it provided a huge dose of validation for Sarkisian's rebuilding program.

For Woodward, it was simply more. Like many close to the program, he had watched spring and fall practices and seen the way the players seemed to be responding. But renewed enthusiasm and winning games can be two different things.

"I could see whether it was in the training room or the weight room or in the cafeteria, I saw the kids were believing in what he was doing, and belief's a major thing," Woodward said. "Whether that could translate on the field [immediately] was uncertain to me. But it obviously has worked."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com.