Hogan’s run helps Stanford persevere 20-13 over Washington

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SEATTLE — In tough games, the question for Stanford seems to be: Can the defense play well enough to make up for the offense’s mistakes?

In the USC game, the answer was no. On Saturday, before a loud crowd of 66,512 at Husky Stadium, the answer was yes.

That’s not to say the Cardinal offense was inert. Stanford outgained Washington by nearly 200 yards. But the No. 16 Cardinal had to overcome three turnovers to beat Washington 20-13 on quarterback Kevin Hogan’s late touchdown run.

After praising the defense profusely, head coach David Shaw sounded a sober note about his team.

“If we can stop turning the ball over, stop making penalties that take points off the board and stop missing field goals, we have a chance to be really good,” he said. “How good, I don’t know. But we’ll never reach our potential if we keep going backwards.”

Say this for Hogan: He makes games exciting. Trying to find Ty Montgomery downfield in the third quarter, he threw a ball on which Oakland native Marcus Peters made a marvelous interception. With the Cardinal threatening later, Hogan fumbled on a strong hit by Shaq Thompson, and Washington’s Danny Shelton recovered.

“We knew we’d face some sort of adversity,” Hogan said. “I’d have liked it not to have been those turnovers. But it happened, and we knew we had to respond. And we did.”

With the score 13-13 midway through the fourth quarter, Stanford took over at the Huskies’ 47 following an unsuccessful fake punt called by first-year head coach Chris Petersen on 4th-and-9.

Including a tackle-breaking 11-yard run, Hogan carried four out of six plays on the drive, aided by a face-mask penalty against the mountainous Shelton. From the 5, Hogan raced around the right side, dived for the pylon and rescued the Cardinal (3-1, 1-1 Pac-12) from big trouble with 4:29 left.

On the winning drive, Montgomery said, Hogan “looked very confident, and he looked like he wanted to score the ball.”

In the team’s previous nail-biter, a 13-10 loss to USC three weeks ago, Hogan lost two fumbles in the second half. He was determined not to let it happen again.

Following the touchdown, the defense still had to stop the Huskies two more times. It ended the first possession with a sack of quarterback Cyler Miles by Henry Anderson and James Vaughters. On the final drive, Peter Kalambayi came up with his third sack of the day, and Kevin Anderson pulled Miles down on a fourth-down scramble at the Stanford 31 to wrap things up.

Stanford built a 10-0 lead before the Huskies earned their initial first down. Montgomery opened the game with a 62-yard kickoff return — he went 99 to open last year’s game with Washington — to set up a field goal. Early in the second quarter, he took a short pass on the sideline, broke away from two tacklers and carried a third into the end zone for a 17-yard touchdown.

Miles, who completed just 15-of-29 passes for 98 yards, connected with Jaydon Mickens for a 25-yard score with 9:59 left in the first half. The holder mishandled the snap on the PAT.

Jordan Williamson kicked his second field goal, but Thompson, a linebacker, scored his fourth defensive touchdown of the season by stealing the ball from Remound Wright and running 32 yards to make it 13-13 at halftime.

Stanford players might have thought Wright was down when he seemed to have been stopped, but Shaw said, “It was a fumble. There was no whistle. The official was running up to spot the ball, but he was letting him run because his forward progress had not been stopped. … The bottom line is the ball got ripped out, and we can’t let that happen.”

Wright also committed a chop-block penalty to nullify a leaping catch by Devon Cajuste. Also, Williamson badly missed a 46-yard field goal try.

“We’re so much better than we’re playing,” Shaw said. At the moment, he said, his team is playing “semi-efficient, sloppy offense. That’s not something we’ve ever been know for, and it’s one thing we’d better not be known for from here on out.”

Tom FitzGerald is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: tfitzgerald@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @tomgfitzgerald

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