It was New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.

Those are perhaps the least likely hours in any year — in one of the least likely cities in the country — to get 18-to-22-year-old guys to ignore the festivities and stick to working.

Yet that’s exactly when Michael Penix Jr. led his Washington Huskies. Again.

The quarterback who’s much more valuable to Washington football than just his wondrous throwing arm called a players-only team meeting at the Huskies’ downtown hotel near Bourbon Street. They’d been there since the day after Christmas.

It was early evening on New Year’s Eve.

“6:55 p.m.,” All-American wide receiver Rome Odunze said, to be exact.

“He called it right before we had a team meeting. It was a players-only meeting. He wanted to talk to us.”

Huskies linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio was surprised.

“It caught me off guard,” the team co-captain said. “I didn’t know he could call a meeting without me knowing.”

Kalen DeBoer didn’t know, either. Into Tuesday, the coach still didn’t know what his quarterback told the team.

He does now.

What was Penix’s message from his 15-minute talk that was still resonating with every Huskies player on the flight back to Seattle on Tuesday following their 37-31 victory over Texas in a pulsating, unforgettable College Football Playoff national semifinal?

Stay focused. We’re here to win a championship.

“We’ve been working for this our whole lives,” Penix told his teammates.

“He brought us in and said, ‘It’s time to go,’ ” Odunze said. “New Orleans. New Year’s. There were a lot of distractions that’s been going on, and he just wanted to make sure that everybody was locked in.

“And we heard him.”

Now the second-ranked Huskies will play for their third national championship and first since 1991, against top-ranked and fellow unbeaten Michigan in the championship game on Monday night in Houston.

“That just shows his leadership, his courage,” Odunze said of Penix, the sixth-year senior who’s bulled through four season-ending injuries, four surgeries, two reconstructed knees and more.

Ulofoshio said Penix’s meeting “was about locking in.”

He talked about what it took: ‘Lock in. Don’t let the outside noise, all that other, extra stuff, get to you.’ ”

Best player, best leader

DeBoer raves about Penix’s leadership as much or more than the throwing from the man his coach calls the best player in college football.

In this sport, the best players aren’t always the best leaders. And the best leaders sometimes aren’t the best players.

Penix is both for Washington.

“This guy really all month was on another level as far as his mission to make sure that this happened,” DeBoer said shortly after Washington’s Sugar Bowl victory. “And I think you saw it all week in practice. There was just nothing he was going to let slide by where we would leave a doubt that we were going to find a way to win.”

Or, as Odunze said of Penix: “He’s that guy.”

He’s not alone

What makes these Huskies extraordinary, perfect at 14-0 and playing for the national championship: It’s not just Penix who leads.

This Washington team is blessed with many players who take charge in a positive way. Their messages, differing in delivery but consistent in direction, feed into 105 players plus coaches, trainers and staffers believing they will win. Every time.

So far, from August through September, October, November, December and now into a new year, they have won.

Every time.

As Penix finished speaking in that players-only meeting the night before the Sugar Bowl, Ulofoshio was next.

“At this point, hey, you’ve got to understand that you’re a legend,” Ulofoshio told his teammates. “Everybody doesn’t know how good you are, how talented you are. But we know how good you are. We talked about this. We’ve worked on it.

“All we’ve got to do is show exactly what we’ve been working on to get here.”