UW seals CFP bid with victory in Pac-12 farewell
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Kyle Bonagura, ESPN Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS — In the final Pac-12 football game before the conference realignment wrecking ball comes, Washington put the finishing touches on one of the best conference seasons in history.
In beating No. 5 Oregon 34-31, the third-ranked Huskies became the first Pac-12 team to reach 13-0 before bowl season, punching a ticket to the College Football Playoff in the process.
“It is sad to see it happen and that be the last football game there,” Washington coach Kalen DeBoer said. “But I think the other part is just understanding how strong the conference was this year.
“There were eight teams [from the Pac-12] at one point, I believe, that were ranked in the Top 25, and we played the best ones and we played one of them twice. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the country that’s gone through what we went through.”
The Huskies technically still need to wait for the selection committee to decide to include them in the four-team field Sunday, but that is only a formality. They will play in either the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl with their opponent to be determined.
With Friday night’s game being played in Las Vegas, it was fitting that one of the subplots coming in was the point spread. Despite carrying a 19-game winning streak and having beaten Oregon earlier in the season, the Huskies came in as a 9.5-point underdog. It didn’t go unnoticed within the Washington locker room.
“I think it was 10-point underdog, which is absolutely insane,” Washington running back Dillon Johnson said. “We definitely took that personal, and we knew coming into the game that we were going to win this game, and we’ve been preaching it all this week. We came out and got the W.”
The point spread looked even less justified as Washington roared to a 20-3 first-half lead. But the Ducks didn’t go quietly. After a touchdown just before the half cut the deficit to 20-10, Oregon added another touchdown drive to open the second half and took a 24-20 lead with 1:51 left in the third quarter.
At that point, it could have been time to panic for the Huskies. They did not. Instead, they retook control with back-to-back long touchdown drives of 10 and 12 plays.
“I think we just always draw on our experiences, and I mean there is a deep, deep, deep belief right now in our football team that when the moments get tough we can really hone in and guys will just do their job, not get overwhelmed and go execute,” DeBoer said.
Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. was named the game’s MVP after completing 27 of 39 passes for 319 yards and a touchdown. Penix needed a big game to give himself a chance to win the Heisman Trophy, and while it’s unclear if Friday’s performance was enough, he will likely make the trip to New York as a finalist.
As the Huskies celebrated the victory on stage after the game, Penix’s teammates made it clear where they stood on the issue, chanting: “Heisman, Heisman, Heisman.”
“It is just a blessing to be able to be in that talk, but for me, always the main thing always for me was to win, and to be able to do that today on a stage like this, it is incredible,” Penix said. “I’m going to always favor and savor this moment. I’m just super excited right now. I’m just really living in this moment. Whatever happens come next weekend, it is going to happen.”
Johnson had a big game, rushing for 152 yards on 28 carries with a pair of scores. He was also credited with a touchdown pass that came on a short shovel pass to Germie Bernard. Rome Odunze (8 catches, 102 yards) and Jalen McMillan (9 catches, 131 yards) both went for more than 100 receiving yards.
NEW YORK — Jen Pawol was in her hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee, when she got the call she had awaited for a decade.
She was going to make her major league debut this weekend, becoming the first woman umpire in a century and a half of big league baseball.
“I was overcome with emotion,” Pawol recalled Thursday, two days before she will break a gender barrier when she works the bases during Miami’s doubleheader at Atlanta. “It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full. I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”
Her voice quavering with emotion, Pawol talked about getting the news during a Wednesday conference call with director of umpire development Rich Rieker and vice president of umpire operations Matt McKendry.
Pawol thought back to her long road. In the early 1990s at West Milford High School in New Jersey, she had a summer conversation with Lauren Rissmeyer, the third baseman on the school’s softball team.
“‘Do you want to come umpire with me?'” Pawol remembered being asked. “I didn’t think twice about it. Lauren’s doing it, so I’m going to do it.”
Pawol’s pay was $15 per game.
“She took a field and I took a field,” Pawol said. “It was a one-umpire system. I had no idea what I was doing, but I got to put gear on and call balls and strikes, so I was in.”
A 1995 graduate at West Milford, which inducted her into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022, Pawol became a three-time all-conference softball selection pick at Hofstra.
After umpiring NCAA softball from 2010 to 2016, she was approached by then-big league ump Ted Barrett at an umpire camp in Binghamton, New York, in early 2015.
“Moreso than any female that I’d seen, she looked like she could handle the rigors of the job physically,” Barrett said Thursday. “But what impressed me was her willingness to learn. She seemed like a sponge, everything that we were teaching her. I’m proud that I made her aware of the opportunity.”
Barrett invited Pawol to attend a clinic in Atlanta and then a MLB tryout camp at Cincinnati that Aug. 15. He invited her to dinner in Atlanta with fellow big league umps Paul Nauert and Marvin Hudson and their wives.
“I warned her: ‘Look, this is what you’re up against. It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big league field,'” Barrett said.
Pawol was among 38 hopefuls invited to the Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, and started her pro umpiring career in the Gulf Coast League on June 24, 2016, working the plate when the GCL Tigers West played at the GCL Blue Jays.
She moved up to the New York/Penn League in 2017, the Midwest League after the first two weeks of the 2018 season, then worked the South Atlantic League in 2019, the High-A Midwest League in 2021, the Double-A Eastern League and the Triple-A International and Pacific Coast Leagues in 2023. She was called in for big league spring training in 2024 and ’25.
“This has been over 1,200 minor league games, countless hours of video review trying to get better, and underneath it all has just been this passion and this love for the game of baseball,” she said. “This started in my playing days as a catcher and transformed over into an umpire, and I think it’s gotten even stronger as an umpire. Umpiring is for me, it’s in my DNA. It’s been a long, hard journey.”
Pawol is among eight women umpires currently in the minors. For her big league debut, she will join Chris Guccione’s crew in Atlanta, where she expects about 30 family and friends. She is to work the bases during Saturday’s doubleheader and call balls and strikes on Sunday.
Pawol was at third base Wednesday night as Jacksonville beat Nashville in the International League when Sounds third baseman Oliver Dunn congratulated her.
“If I make it to the big leagues,” he told her, “we will have both worked all the levels together.”
Pawol repeatedly thanked her minor league umpiring predecessors, mentioning several who exchanged calls or texts, including Christine Wren, Pam Postema and Ria Cortesio. Just after her promotion to Triple-A, Pawol met with Postema in Las Vegas.
“The last thing she said to me when I saw her was ‘Get it done!'” Powal explained. “So I texted her yesterday and said, ‘I’m getting it done!'”
Barrett will be watching from Oregon, where he is attending Northwest League games this weekend.
“The hopes of this are that it inspires,” he said. “Who knows, there’ll be a young lady watching the game on TV and says, ‘Hey, I’d like to try that.'”
PITTSBURGH — It took 47 major league games before Pirates ace Paul Skenes gave up seven hits to an opposing lineup.
Skenes’ record streak of allowing six or fewer hits ended at 46 starts Thursday night in a 7-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
According to OptaStats, the longest such streak to begin a career (excluding openers) previously belonged to Shohei Ohtani, who went 31 starts from 2018 to 2021 for the Los Angeles Angels.
Skenes (7-8) yielded seven hits over six innings Thursday night. He struck out eight and lowered his ERA to 1.94, lowest among qualified pitchers. He extended his scoreless streak at home to 27⅔ innings; he hasn’t allowed a run at PNC Park since June 8 against the Philadelphia Phillies — and that one was unearned.
“His stuff was elite,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said.
Skenes hasn’t permitted an earned run over his past five starts at PNC Park, the longest such stretch for a Pirates pitcher at home since earned runs became an official National League statistic in 1912. Skenes had shared the team record with Bob Harmon (1915) and Zane Smith (1990).
The 23-year-old right-hander is the youngest major league pitcher since 1920 with such a streak.
“Every time he goes out, he’s unbelievable, the way he’s able to attack hitters,” Kelly said.
Skenes has been especially effective against the Reds, with a 4-0 career record and 0.39 ERA to go with 33 strikeouts.
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