Crazy is becoming the Washington football team’s middle name.

One week after winning on a wild play now known in Seattle as the “immaculate interception,” the Huskies fell on one that probably shouldn’t have happened.

If UW coach Steve Sarkisian could do it again, he wouldn’t have even given ASU a chance to get the ball back before overtime.

The first-year head coach thought he had a big play, so on third-and-one at their own 19-yard line and just 28 seconds remaining in regulation, the Huskies took a chance downfield instead of running the ball and sending the game into overtime.

The result was disaster.

The third-down play did set up a big play — but not the one Sarkisian was expecting.

UW junior quarterback Jake Locker’s pass fell incomplete on third down, forcing the Huskies to punt.

ASU took over at midfield, and the rest is history. Senior quarterback Danny Sullivan found senior wide receiver Chris McGaha for the game-winning touchdown, and the Huskies were headed home.

“It’s on me,” Sarkisian said of the third-down play call that gave the Sun Devils (4-2, 2-1 Pac-10) the ball back. “We thought we had a play.

We thought we had something set up that we were working on all game.

Obviously, it didn’t work the way we had planned it.”

It is a learning process for this young Husky team, its first-year head coach added. But if he had to do it again, he would have run the football.

“It was just a poor call,” Sarkisian said. “This was hard to swallow for me. The right decision would have been to run the ball. The game would have ended with the ball in our hands, which is what you always want in a tie game.”

Instead of UW controlling the football at the end of the game like the Huskies (3-4, 2-2 Pac-10) did so well in their upset of USC, they gave ASU’s offense one last shot.

The Sun Devils took over at midfield with 13 seconds to play, and the Huskies fully expected them to run a crossing route to the middle of the field, call timeout and set up a field goal.

UW was in a cover-three defense, which means that the safeties play to not let anyone behind them. The Huskies jumped to the crossing route they thought ASU was going to run and got burned deep instead.

“[We] left the middle of the field wide open,” Sarkisian said. “It was not an aggressive play. We thought we had the deep ball covered, but we didn’t.”

The play happened so fast, in fact, that nobody in the UW locker room knew exactly what happened on the play.

“We messed up,” freshman cornerback Desmond Trufant said. “He was just open somehow. I guess we just weren’t in the right position. It’s the worst feeling ever.”

Sarkisian said he felt the whole game felt out of sync, and it was hard to get in a rhythm with the constant stoppages and penalties from the officials throughout the game.

With the players out of rhythm, Sarkisian admitted that he didn’t do a good job of adjusting.

“I could have managed the ball game better,” Sarkisian said. “I pride myself on doing that, and I didn’t do a very good job tonight.”

The Huskies had opportunities to put more points on the board, as well.

Locker threw an interception at the ASU one-yard line in the second quarter after the Huskies were aided on the drive by ASU penalties.

“I think we left a lot of yards out there and a lot of points out there,” Locker said. “I threw the interception inside the 10-yard line, and that could have been seven points, and we missed a couple of other shots down the field.”

The loss could end up meaning more for UW — it ultimately could cost the Huskies a trip to a bowl game. With a tough schedule coming up, starting with a showdown against Pac-10-leading Oregon in Seattle on Saturday, the Huskies now have to find three more wins on the schedule instead of just two.

“We still have the same confidence to try to get to a bowl game,” Trufant said. “We’ve just got to keep pushing.”

Reach the reporter at andrew.gruman@asu.edu.