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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Receivers Don’t Quite Catch On

Steve Bergum And John Blanchette S Staff writer

Ryan Leaf’s performance in Saturday’s 36-24 loss to Stanford certainly put a new spin on the continually unfolding quarterback tale at Washington State.

But, as bench starter Chad Davis insisted last week, the issue of the Cougars’ erratic offense isn’t solely a question of quarterbacking - and wide receiver Chad Carpenter seems to agree.

“As receivers, we’ve got to start making catches,” said Carpenter, a junior who had his most prolific day as a Cougar receiver - seven catches for 77 yards.

“We’ve got to start making big plays. You saw their receivers - they were diving all over the place, making grabs. We’ve got to start doing that. We’ve got to start laying out for the football.”

Leaf did connect on three touchdown passes - to Bryant Thomas, Eric Moore and Shawn Tims. But at least five of the 18 passes that went incomplete were catchable balls, and one of those could have been a touchdown. Jay Dumas had a ball go through his hands in the end zone on first down from the Stanford 12 in the fourth quarter - though Leaf hooked up with Tims two plays later.

Getting used to the new pitcher may be a factor.

“The obvious difference is just the velocity of the ball,” Dumas said, comparing Leaf with Davis. “They both throw a nice spiral and pretty much put it in the same spot.

“I can’t put the blame on Ryan’s arm, he put the ball where he needed to and as receivers, sometimes we did not make the catches when we needed to.”

No snow, but lots of no-shows

It was cold - 44 degrees at game time. It was breezy. It was raining leading up to the game. The start was pushed back to 3:30 p.m. to accommodate television - meaning fans could enjoy the action from their living rooms.

And with Washington State mired in a long losing streak - now five games - it’s probably not surprising that of the 26,572 tickets purchased for the game, only 13,259 were used.

Sub-20,000 crowds for pre-Apple Cup games in November are something of a WSU tradition the exception being the past two years, when the Cougars drew 34,987 for UCLA and 36,686 for USC.

“When I looked up at the crowd man, I just said to myself that these guys here are diehards,” said linebacker Chris Hayes. “Let’s go do it for these fans who came to watch us. Them are the real Cougars who came to watch us play, and I respected that. I wanted to give them a victory as much as I wanted to give the underclassmen a victory.

“They came and sat through it in this weather, when our season hasn’t gone as good as we expected. Those were the real Cougars. The rest of them, I have no comment to them.”

Demand a recount

Hayes, you may recall, was an early candidate for the Butkus Award, given to the nation’s outstanding collegiate linebacker. He’s WSU’s leading tackler on the year, with 74 heading into the Stanford game.

But when the statistics came out Saturday, the senior captain didn’t crack the tackle chart. As in zero. He did have one near miss - Stanford running back Anthony Bookman barely escaping to hand off to Damon Dunn on a reverse that went for a Cardinal touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Trash throwin’

It was a long day for WSU’s true freshman cornerback Andesola Moronkola, who was pressed into extensive duty after junior Shad Hinchen left the game with a concussion early in the third quarter.

Moronkola, who also returns kickoffs, was burned several times on pass plays and was in the vicinity of two Mark Butterfield throws that were pulled down for touchdowns.

“They was pickin’ on me,” admitted the 18-year-old from Richmond, Calif. “I prepare every week, every practice for this, but I really didn’t think I was going to get this much playing time. When I went in there, I was shook up, like, ‘Gosh, I’m playing!’ But before I realized it, I was playing and it was over with.”’

To Stanford’s credit, it refrained from talking trash to the Cougars’ impressionable rookie. The Cardinal just kept throwing at him.

“That’s about the only type of talking they were doing,” Moronkola said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo