The Washington Huskies football team will look to bounce back after a disappointing 24-7 result against the Michigan Wolverines.

The Huskies (5-2 overall, 2-2 Big Ten) were unable to get it done against the Wolverines, but could still finish out the season strong.

Washington can become bowl eligible and earn its first ranked win of the season at 12:30 p.m. PT on Saturday against the No. 23 Illinois Fighting Illini at Husky Stadium in Seattle.

"It's a huge part of college football — getting bowl eligible," Huskies coach Jedd Fisch said in a post from the official team account on "X." "That's important. It's everything you want. You want to get to that first win and you keep going from there. But we got to get to No. 6 on Saturday by playing extremely hard. That'll be the key."

Illinois will also enter the game 5-2 and 2-2 in the Big Ten.

This is Washington's second season against under Fisch. If the team beats the Fighting Illini on Saturday, the Huskies will match their win total from last season.

Illinois has had its own program resurgence over the last two seasons. The Fighting Illini finished last year with a 10-3 record and Fisch expressed admiration over how Illinois has built the program.

"(Bret Bielema) has done a fantastic job," Fisch said. "(Illinois) won 10 games last year. They keep building, they keep getting better. He's been doing this now a lot of years as a head coach, fifth year now at Illinois. I expect a really, really good challenge with some really good players and I expect our guys are up for it."

The Huskies will also be attempting to play cleaner ball than they did last week. Washington and Michigan was tied 7-7 through most of three quarters before the Wolverines pulled away.

Washington, which entered last week as one of the best teams in the conference and country in terms of protecting the football and second half scoring, didn't score in the fourth quarter and turned the ball over four times in the second half: three interceptions and one turnover on downs.

"We got to make sure that we take care of the football," Fisch said. "Last week we didn't do that nearly as well as we should have. And then we got to take the ball away. We got to find a way to take the ball away from them and then really be disciplined all the way throughout the game."

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