Sean Harlow Out For Season

Oregon State coach Gary Andersen confirmed at his Monday press conference what everyone feared since Saturday night; junior left tackle Sean Harlow will need surgery on his right ankle that he injured against Colorado, and is done for the season.

It was not a surprise; it's rarely a good thing when they bring out a piece of farm equipment to haul off the pieces of a player.

Harlow, the Beavers best offensive lineman, has made 28 career starts dating back to his freshman season, and was in the hunt for All-Pac-12 consideration this year.

Fortunately, sophomore Will Hopkins was in his first game back after suffering an injury himself, and performed quite well in place of Harlow against the Buffs. The initial dropoff should not be that great, credit to Hopkins, but the problem will be a hit to the depth of the o-line, that has been without Gavin Andrews all season, and now also has Fred Lauina in questionable status for the Utah trip, with a significant quad contusion that ended his evening Saturday as well.

There was some good news, in that both CB Treston Decoud, who left the game in an ambulance, to be checked out at the hospital, and RB Chris Brown, who limped off the field after jamming his knee into the turf, were both walking around today. Decoud, who was released from Good Samaritan Hospital Saturday night in time to return to the locker room after the game, and Brown, will both miss this Saturday's Utah game, but Andersen does expect both back at some point later this season.

Andersen also confirmed that Storm Woods' status will be unknown for a while, so watch for a lot of Nall Ball in Salt Lake City. Nall had 122 yards on 20 carries, both career highs, against the Buffs.

On other subjects of interest, Andersen confirmed that we will continue to see both Seth Collins and Nick Mitchell at quarterback, and probably some more of having both of them on the field at once. Mitchell mostly took over for Collins Saturday night, but Andersen indicated its not a case of his replacing Collins permanently.

One thing that was not announced today was a start time for Oregon State's next home game, Dad's Day on Saturday, November 7 against UCLA.

It's not as though the game between the Beavers and the Bruins is likely to be a premier choice, but the networks are deferring most of their scheduling moves in consideration of this weekend's outcomes before making their prime schedule assignments, which in turn lead to filling in the gaps around them.

FOX did pick Utah at Washington for their over-the air east coast prime time game, which sets kickoff in Seattle for 4:30 PM, but obviously, the outcome of this Saturday's Stanford at Washington State game will impact the importance of both the Arizona State at Washington State and Stanford at Utah contests. Arizona at USC could be more or less pivotal depending on how the 'Cats and Trojans do at Washington and Cal this Saturday, and there are other emerging national stories and games the networks, especially ESPN, obviously want to make best programming from.

It may be that both the UCLA game and the subsequent trip to Cal will get their start times and coverage assigned next Sunday/Monday.

UPDATE:

Fox has added the ASU-WSU game, which is Dad's Day in Pullman, as the Fox 1 national game in the afternoon, with kickoff at 12:30 PM, just the third game this year in the conference in the once prominent 12:30 slot.

ESPN has also slotted both the Cal at Oregon and Arizona at USC games for 7:30, though they haven't decided which one will be on ESPN, and which one will be on ESPN2 yet.

This probably means the Stanford at Colorado game and the Bruins and Beavers will be relegated to the Pac-12 Network, since the games involve the last place teams in both divisions, even though the games also involve the 2 largest markets in the conference footprint. Best bet is the game in Boulder will get an early start, with noon locally, and 1 PM PST likely, and the UCLA-Oregon State game being a 4:30 or 5 PM game, or thereabouts, making it another night game (standard time will be back by then).

UPDATED UPDATE:

The Pac-12 finally finalized their schedule for the 7th, with the morning starting with Stanford at Colorado at 11 AM MST, which is 10 AM PST (and the  Stanford players' body clock time, ending a run of 5 night games in a row for the Cardinal). This cleared the way for a 1:30 PM tv window for the UCLA-Oregon St. game, the traditional time slot of a bygone era, before tv windows determined all game times.

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com