y deserving of a check against the boards.?It was as if they were asking You wanna play hockey? Here it is, as they pinned us against the glass.The g

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Jake Browning and the Washington Huskies sure made a good case that they may have been snubbed in the initial College Football Playoff rankings even if they say they werent bothered by it in the least.Browning threw for 378 yards and six touchdowns to set Washingtons single-season record for TD passes, and the fifth-ranked Huskies beat California 66-27 on Saturday night.Days after being ranked fifth in the playoff rankings behind one-loss Texas A&M, the Huskies (9-0, 6-0 Pac-12, No. 4 AP) took care of business in efficient fashion hours after the Aggies were upset by Mississippi State.I think its good, Browning said. Theres a lot of football left to play. Put us outside the top four and make us earn it.John Ross had 208 yards receiving and three scores. Dante Pettis caught three touchdown passes and threw another to lead the Huskies to their 12th straight win in convincing fashion.Washington is off to its best start since going 12-0 and winning a share of the national title in 1991.Its nice to get into a grove like that, Pettis said. You move the ball down the field pretty easily and things feel good. Everyone is in the mojo right there. Thats how it was today.The Bears (4-5, 2-4) had won five straight home games, including victories over ranked Texas and Utah earlier this season. But they were no match for the Huskies, who were far more potent on offense and much stingier on defense.Davis Webb threw for 262 yards and one touchdown, and ran for a second score. But he also had three second-half interceptions as the Huskies pulled away with 38 straight points after Cal cut the deficit to 21-20 midway through the second quarter.We just let the game get away from us, Dykes said. We turned the ball over on three straight possessions, we couldnt get any stops and we did not do a good job on third downs.Browning did most of the work, finding Ross and Pettis open repeatedly downfield for big plays. Ross scored on TD catches of 60 and 67 yards, eluding four defenders after backtracking 4 yards on the longer TD. Pettis caught a 32-yard TD pass that gave Browning 34 TDs this season, one more then Keith Price had for the Huskies in 2011.They were kind of stacking the box, Browning said. Its high risk, high reward. Thats going to happen with those deep balls.THE TAKEAWAYWashington: The Huskies showed off their balance on offense. When Cal stacked the box to stop the run, Browning was able to beat the Bears with deep passes. When the defense rolled coverage to take away Ross, Washingtons other receivers took advantage of the opportunity. The Huskies also gained 287 yards on the ground with TD runs from Lavon Coleman and Myles Gaskin.California: Struggling on defense is nothing new for the Bears, who came into the game allowing more than 505.9 yards and 41.8 points per contest. The offense was a problem this game. Cal settled for field goals after starting in Washington territory on two first-half possessions and converted just 1 of 14 third downs.LONG TIME COMINGPettis said he had practiced his pass play a few times each week and was eager to get the chance to pull it off in a game. That opportunity came in the first quarter when he took a lateral from Browning and then hit Darrell Daniels for a 39-yard score.That was fun, Pettis said. Ive been joking to my coach that we were never going to call that paly and sure enough we called it today.WORST EVERCal tied the modern school record for points allowed in a game, matching the performance in a 66-0 loss to Alabama in the 1973 season opener.POLL IMPLICATIONSThe Huskies should remain fourth in the AP poll .UP NEXTWashington: The Huskies host USC on Saturday.California: The Bears play the other top team in the division when they visit Washington State on Saturday. Custom Mookie Wilson Jersey . Irving scored 23 points, Tristan Thompson had 20 points and 10 rebounds and the Cavaliers beat the Denver Nuggets 117-109 on Friday night. Mookie Wilson Jersey Large .In my heart and mind Im competing for India, luge competitor Shiva Keshavan told The Associated Press in an email interview. Every day Im flooded with messages from Indians all over the world telling me they are supporting me. http://www.custommetsjersey.com/ .C. -- After a listless first half, the Washington Wizards used a big third quarter run to beat the Charlotte Bobcats Bradley Beal scored 21 points and the Wizards used a 17-0 run in the third quarter to take control of what had been a close game and beat the Bobcats 97-83 on Tuesday night. Authentic Custom Mets Jersey . Philadelphia is 2-0 against the Senators this season and scored five goals in each victory. The Flyers recorded a 5-0 win in Ottawa on Nov. 12 and then earned a 5-2 home decision on Nov. 19. The Flyers have claimed three straight and four of the last five encounters with the Sens overall and Philly has won two in a row and three of its past four tests in Canadas capital city. Custom Mets Jersey China . In taking its goal tally to 99 in all competitions already this season, City delivered another demonstration of its lethal firepower at Etihad Stadium to set up a fourth-round match at home to another second-tier team -- Watford. In July and August, espnWs weekly essay series will focus on body image.It was Christmas break, and Kevin, two other guys and I had free reign of our high schools rink. The empty, ancient arena was a thing of beauty: the massive swath of ice, diamond-hard after a sub-zero night, and our sharp silver blades slicing it as echoes rang out under the high-beamed wooden roof.The emptiness of the rink invited long strides from one end to the other. I could race against only myself, sweating in the cold, pushing the ice from underneath my blades in circles.I was practicing my wrist shot against the boards, satisfied by the dull boom each time the puck hit the thick plastic: a proclamation of power.You know, were equal in the eyes of the school, Kevin said as he lifted the puck into the corner of the net.Hockey was less of a choice I consciously made than a birth rite. Allegedly, my first word was hockey, and by age 4 I walked around declaring that I would marry Wayne Gretzky.My dad, who was also my coach, had been a Division I goalie, and my older brother Ethan had played since childhood. Later Ethan grew to the size of a refrigerator and had a successful career as a power defenseman at the same high school I now attended.Just fall on the puck! hed tell me when I was 6 years old, strung up in goalie pads while he and his friends took shots. I idolized Ethan and was happy to be included, tennis balls whipping past my face.?Id been on skates for the first time at age 2, but gaps in my training had prohibited developing formidable skill. My shot wasnt strong enough, and my aim was not accurate. I couldnt maneuver past my opponents to the goal. I was a good skater, but couldnt nimbly dance around a huge defender. I loved being on the ice, and in high school the rink became my second home.Kevins ironic assertion of our equality, while he was clearly athletically superior to me, was a typical exchange of gender relations at our high school. I rolled my eyes at him, used to it. We were both members of our schools varsity hockey teams, but I understood that he meant to make clear that I was a guest in a realm that belonged to him.Our school itself had transitioned from all-boys to coed only the September before my freshman year, and female students were struggling to find a place and identity on campus. Wed commit ourselves fully to the court, field or ice, all grit and sweat.Then wed buy new dresses and lip gloss for school dances, hoping to be adored, or at least hoping to appease, an attempt to gain power in this nation of boys where our citizenship was tenuous.At my high school, girls with exceeding athletic talent werent an anomaly. Prowesss on the field, court, or ice was more of a standard we all tried to live up to.dddddddddddd. The field hockey and lacrosse players, who traipsed around their fields tanned, in mascara and skirts, their ponytails bouncing, were lusted after.Hockey was different.Even more so than football, the cold night games of the Boys Varsity Hockey team in the outdoor rink, with the crunch of helmets, pads and bones against the plexiglass boards drew roars from a devoted crowd of students, mostly boys who wished they were on the roster.The girls games, in general, were quieter affairs. Our first season began my junior year. We were covered from head to toe in thick padding, skating out onto unchartered territory.Theres no checking, or pinning someone against the boards in womens hockey, so the rabid fans of fights and falls tend to consider it boring, and dismiss the game as a pale imitation rather than a distinct athletic endeavor.For girls to interlope in the schools most sacred athletic ritual was taken as heresy by some of the sports male fans: we were treading on territory explicitly marked for and by them.Previous to having our own team, girls at my high school who wanted to play hockey were shuffled onto the junior varsity B team, which also became home to the boys who were cut from junior varsity. A.During games, our opponents would spot our ponytails and stride straight toward us. We were smaller, easy targets apparently deserving of a check against the boards.?It was as if they were asking You wanna play hockey? Here it is, as they pinned us against the glass.The guys on our team, themselves full of shame for having to play with the girls at all, would be suddenly roused to come to our defense, chasing the offender down and serving it right back to them.Hanging with Kevin and the guys over Christmas break gave me hope: maybe I could be tough, and taken seriously, maybe I could be a person to them, and not just a girl, vulnerable at every turn to a critique of my appearance.I remembered the warning from one of my beloved teen magazines that cautioned against playing sports with boys: You dont want them to see you as one of the guys.Still, whenever I can, I lace up a pair of skates. Its best at night, when the rink is empty, and the ice becomes a thread that runs through the needles of my skates, and the motion is so seamless that the ice and I are moving as one.Emily May is a writer and artist based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently at work on a book of essays. Follow her on Twitter?@l337tween. ' ' '