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Taking to the air

Arizona Daily Wildcat Photo courtesy Stanford media guide Stanford senior wide receiver Troy Walters leads a deep and talented Cardinal receiving corps into Arizona this weekend for the Wildcats' Pac-10 opener. Walters leads Stanford with 169 yards and 13 receptions this season.

Stanford senior wide receiver Troy Walters was listed as a senior in last year's media guide.

Academically, that is true. He was just a junior in terms of his football career.

So, when UA head coach Dick Tomey saw Walters was coming back with the Cardinal for Saturday night's Pacific 10 Conference opener at Arizona Stadium, he was a bit surprised.

"I thought we'd seen him for the last time," Tomey said.

Not quite, as Walters is back for the Cardinal and in the familiar position of leading the team in yards receiving. So far this year, he has 169 yards after racking up 880 last year and a school-record 1,206 yards as a sophomore.

"He's a good player, he's really electrifying," Tomey said. "He played some of our game, not a lot, enough to do some damage. He's a Dennis Northcutt-type player."

While comparisons to Arizona's top receiver are nice, Walters does not have a lot of fond memories of his past encounters with the Wildcats.

In 1997 Stanford rolled into Tucson fresh off an upset of Notre Dame. But the Cardinal wound up getting steamrolled by Arizona's rushing attack as the Wildcats turned their stumbling season around with the victory.

"That was a weird night, it was cold, windy," Walters said. "We fumbled like 10 times in that game. The last two games Arizona has had our number."

Actually, Arizona has six in a row against the Cardinal.

Last season Walters had only one reception for 67 yards before spraining his ankle and missing the next month. That's left Walters anticipating another shot at the Wildcats.

"I'm very eager, yesterday I was watching a film of last year's game and it brought back some bad memories," he said. "I want to have a good game against Arizona. We played them well even in my absence last year, but not enough to win."

This year has been a somewhat different story as the Cardinal has played both its games with Walters, yet wound up losing the first to Texas 69-17, and then beating Washington State 54-17.

"I think we have a good team, I just think the Texas game was our first game and we had a lot of kinks to work out," Walters said. "They just destroyed us early, but we bounced back against Washington State. We came out firing at the beginning and things kept rolling. But this week will be a very tough task. It'll show us where we are as a team."

The man throwing to Walters is sophomore quarterback Todd Husak, who was only 18 for 41 against Arizona last year for 274 yards and two touchdowns. Walters said Husak has outgrown most of his freshman mistakes.

"He's doing good, the first game we all didn't play well," Walters said. "He's very intelligent, knows the offense well. He likes to spread the ball around. He's a great leader on the field. Each game he's getting better."

Unlike Arizona which has a lack of experience in receivers, Stanford has two more who played a lot last year, senior DeRonnie Pitts and junior Dave Davis.

"They've got enough experienced people at that position to keep us honest," Tomey said.

This year, Stanford also has a running game behind true freshman Kerry Carter, whom Walters said is "very important" to the Cardinal.

"If you look at all the great teams, all the Pac-10 champions were able to run the ball when they had to," he said. "You're going to have to run the ball to keep the defense off-balance and win the time of possession battle."

Running the ball has been a problem for Stanford against Arizona. The Cardinal only had 52 net yards on 130 carries in the last five meetings between the team.

This year though, Stanford is even better at stopping the run. After giving up 511 yards of total offense to UA last year, Walters said the Cardinal players know how important it is to contain the Wildcats.

"Texas had the biggest linemen in the country, and our defense held them to under two yards per carry," he said. "Our run defense has been excellent. Our pass defense has been improved. If we can stop the run and make them throw all day we have a chance."