Top dog: Huskies’ DeBoer named AP’s best coach
SEATTLE — Kalen DeBoer landing the job at Washington two years ago seemed to be an unheralded transaction at the time.
It has turned out to be a shrewd decision by the Huskies. One might say it’s been perfect.
DeBoer was named The Associated Press coach of the year on Tuesday after leading the Huskies to a 13-0 record, the Pac-12 championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff in just his second year in charge at Washington. The Huskies will face Texas in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1 with a spot in the CFP championship game on the line.
In his two seasons, the Huskies are 23-2, leaving behind the bitter memory of a 4-8 record in 2021 that led to a change and brought DeBoer to Washington.
“It’s all about the people around me. This is a team award,” DeBoer said. “When you win, I tell the players this, you win football games, you’re going to get recognized and more awards are going to get shared. I’m fortunate enough to kind of be the figurehead of our team and receive these cool awards. Just really blessed.”
DeBoer received 30 of 52 first-place votes and had 113 points overall from AP Top 25 poll voters to easily outpace Florida State‘s Mike Norvell (57 points). Missouri‘s Eli Drinkwitz (38) and Arizona‘s Jedd Fisch (28) were the only other coaches to receive multiple first-place votes.
DeBoer is the first Washington coach ever to be named the AP coach of the year and just the third Pac-12 coach to win the award in the last 25 years, joining Mike MacIntyre (Colorado, 2016) and Chip Kelly (Oregon, 2010).
“I think when dealing with the team, I think I’m the same. I think there’s job responsibilities that come along with this level that you continue to adjust to and learn from — the good, bad and ugly, whatever it was that had happened,” DeBoer said. “But I think when it comes to building the team, the foundation of it is the same, the same priorities.”
DeBoer is in just his fourth season as a head coach in the Bowl Subdivision. He was 67-3 at his alma mater, Sioux Falls, from 2005-09 and won three NAIA championships. At Fresno State, he went 12-6 in two seasons, including 9-3 the final year.
When the Washington job came open, DeBoer knew he was ready for the challenge of a Power Five program. But he was inheriting a team that went through a tumultuous season that included the firing of coach Jimmy Lake with two games still on the schedule.
While DeBoer won at nearly every stop, he still needed to prove to his new team that his methods would work.
“We were open ears to what he had to say, and he was so persistent in his genuineness and his commitment to take this program to the top that at the end of the day, it was unstoppable to be able to trust him,” first-team AP All-American wide receiver Rome Odunze said.
While it certainly helped to have talent like Odunze and Heisman Trophy runner up Michael Penix Jr., a significant amount of Washington’s success this season came because DeBoer and the Huskies were great in close games.
Each of Washington’s final eight games were decided by 10 points or fewer and all of them were in question into the fourth quarter. Washington’s final four wins — Utah, Oregon State, Washington State and Oregon — were decided by a total of 15 points.
That speaks to coaching. And belief.
“We’ve gotten here because he’s carried through with everything he said he was going to do with all his effort,” Odunze said.
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani hit two homers in an 11-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, emphatically ending the three-time MVP’s longest homer drought since joining the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani led off the bottom of the first with his 24th homer, hammering Landen Roupp‘s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had been in a 10-game homer drought since June 2, going 10-for-40 in that stretch with no RBIs, although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
Ohtani led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck‘s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation as Ohtani produced his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks after he was named the NL Player of the Month for May with a formidable performance, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Hunter Dobbins had quite the week.
First, he said last weekend that he would rather retire than pitch for the Yankees because his father was drafted by New York twice before being traded.
Then, he went out and beat the Yankees.
A few days after his comments about never wanting to pitch for New York, he had to defend his dad’s story about being drafted by the Yankees in response to a New York Post article that cited multiple official databases and the Yankees’ own records that couldn’t confirm Lance Dobbins ever played with the organization.
On Saturday night, Dobbins (4-1) followed up by going six shutout innings in Boston’s 4-3 victory over New York, his second win over the Yankees in less than a week.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m more worried about just the win column, whether it’s against them or anybody. My job is to try and help this team win as many ballgames as we can, and pitch in meaningful playoff baseball games. That’s what I’m more focused on.”
But he realizes what it means to the fan base in this longtime rivalry, with the Red Sox fans heard chanting about the Yankees outside the park before he spoke in an interview room.
“Yeah, I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” he said. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, so being able to get those wins — especially twice in one week — means a lot and looking forward to trying to build on that going forward.”
In his victory over New York last Sunday, Dobbins held the Yankees to three runs over five innings, two on a first-inning homer by Aaron Judge.
On Saturday night, Judge went 0-for-3 against him, striking out twice on curveballs.
“It was just kind of scouting,” Dobbins said of his game plan against New York’s slugger after Garrett Crochet struck him out three times in the series opener Friday.
“Crochet has an electric fastball. I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite,” he said. “So we knew we had better weapons to go at him with, so I felt like we did a good job of kind of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins struck out five and gave up only two singles Saturday.
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