2021 Begins With Two Home Games
SEATTLE - The 2021 season will begin this week for the Washington Huskies, who start their Pac-12 title defense with two home games. Washington will host Northwest University and Gonzaga this week, with both games aired via the Washington live stream on GoHuskies.com.
Washington was last seen making the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament in 2019 after winning its third Pac-12 championship in school history. Washington has now won two Pac-12 championships in Jamie Clark's nine years as head coach.
Washington has won its last three season-opening matches and eight of its last nine. The only loss in that span was in 2016, when the Huskies lost to Utah Valley 2-1. That was the only time in those nine seasons that Washington has allowed multiple goals in its first game.
Sam Fowler is back after beginning his career as the first Husky freshman to start at keeper since Spencer Richey in 2010. He started his career with five straight shutouts. Only two opponents have scored multiple goals against Fowler in his young career: Cal and Georgetown. Fowler had a 0.62 GAA last season: only one freshman in the country had a better GAA. Fowler's GAA was fifth overall in the country. Only 11 freshmen had GAAs under 1.00.
Christian Soto and Fowler each earned All-Pac-12 honors as freshmen last year. That makes it three consecutive years Washington has had multiple freshmen earn All-Pac-12 honors. Washington has had at least one freshman on the All-Pac-12 team for five consecutive years. Soto and Imanol Rosales each made 20 appearances for the Huskies as freshmen, with Soto starting 16 of 20 games and Rosales three of 20. Washington had not had two freshmen play in 20+ games since 2007, when Brad Keller, Taylor Mueller, and Matt Van Houten all did.
Lucas Meek finished third in the Pac-12 in scoring last year with 19 points. He never went more than one game without recording a point. His five-game goal streak early in the season was Washington's longest goal-scoring streak since the turn of the century: no other Husky has had more than a four-game goal streak since 2000. Meek and Gio Miglietti give Washington a pair of returners with five or more goals each: Miglietti with five and Meek with six. In the last decade, Washington has only had multiple returning five-goal scorers twice: Scott Menzies and Kyle Coffee in 2018 and Darwin Jones and Josh Heard in 2014.
Charlie Ostrem was one of five Huskies to appear in all 21 games in 2019 and the only Husky to start all 21, playing 1847 minutes. Ostrem's 21 starts were the most by any Husky since 2016, when Luke Hauswirth also started 21 games. Hauswirth was the last Husky to start 20+ games in back-to-back season, doing so in 2016 and 2017.
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