SEATTLE_Good things happened when Washington let Jake Browning throw the football.
Browning threw three touchdown passes in his best game of the season, and the No. 10 Huskies overcame a disastrous start to hold on for a 27-20 victory over Arizona State before a sold-out crowd of 71,200 at Husky Stadium on Saturday night.
Senior linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven had another stellar performance _ 20 tackles and two forced fumbles _ and the Washington defense shut down the Sun Devils' potent passing attack, holding Arizona State to just 268 yards of total offense.
The Huskies improved to 2-0 in Pac-12 play (3-1 overall). They will close out the nonconference portion of their schedule next Saturday when BYU visits Husky Stadium.
Arizona State (2-2, 0-1 Pac-12) scored its first touchdown in the opening minutes of the game after benefiting from a poor pass from Washington wide receiver Andre Baccellia on a failed trick-play double pass. ASU cornerback Chase Lucas intercepted Baccellia's pass at the UW 39-yard line.
Six plays later, Eno Benjamin's fourth-down run from the 1 gave Arizona State an early 7-0 lead.
Browning and the UW offense answered on their next possession with a nine-play, 80-yard drive, capped by a 11-yard play-action touchdown pass to Aaron Fuller. That tied the score at 7-7.
Brandon Ruiz gave Arizona State a 10-7 lead with a 48-yard field goal later in the first quarter, the first of his two field goals on the night.
The Huskies' offense again came back with a long scoring drive, covering 75 yards on five plays. Ty Jones, the Huskies' 6-foot-4 sophomore receiver, hauled in an 19-yard TD pass from Browning as he was falling backward with a defender in tight coverage.
UW's Peyton Henry connected on a 26-yard field goal in the second quarter, and the Huskies led 17-10 at halftime.
Henry converted another field goal, from 29 yards, in the third quarter to extend UW's lead to 20-13.
Early in the fourth quarter, Browning scrambled right away from pressure and found redshirt freshman tight end Cade Otton in the back corner of the end zone for a 5-yard touchdown, pushing the lead to 27-13 with 10:59 left.
Arizona State QB Manny Wilkins dived in from 2 yards out to cut UW's lead to 27-20 with 2:54 remaining.
Trying to run out the clock, UW's offense appeared to go three-and-out after a Browning pass to Baccellia along the right sideline was initially ruled out of bounds. After a review, the play was overturned; Baccellia got his right foot in bounds and made the catch before getting pushed out of bounds.
That gave the Huskies a first down at their 38-yard line with 2:38 left.
On the next play, the Huskies then benefited from an unnecessary-roughness penalty against ASU, giving UW a first down at the ASU 45.
