Until He Left, WSU’s Hearts Skipped A Beat

Right up front let’s applaud UCLA coach Bob Toledo’s show of stones in not kicking a field goal for the tie and overtime, no matter how many For Sale signs he finds aerating his lawn this morning.

And while we’re on gratitude patrol, an attaboy to Bruins tailback Skip Hicks for begging off on fourth-and-goal - perhaps not a major-league no mas in the Roberto Duran vein, but no worse than Triple-A, anyway.

What a bonus - controversy and ignobility coming standard with great football, like factory air with a Beemer.

And what a bonus for the Washington State Cougars to raise the curtain with such an unequivocal success, which is what Saturday’s 37-34 stinging of UCLA was - never mind how shamelessly the Cougs milked it into a cliffhanger. “They were Hercules - the heroes of the day,” WSU flanker Chris Jackson said of the Cougar defense’s last stand. “It was like they were playing with UCLA - letting them get down to the 1-yard line and then showing them what they could do.”

Which drew a laugh from Leon Bender, the brute who hurled his blocker into the path of Hicks’ surrogate, Jermaine Lewis, in the shadow of the goal line and saved Wazzu’s collective hide.

“I’m glad he felt that way,” Bender said. “But it was a lot more fatigue than a flair for the dramatic.”

Yes, yes, the Cougs played a budding blowout into near heartbreak. So what? It’s a trifle, the fine print of Cougar football, a little hazing for the pledges.

Remember, when bowl committeemen start adding up your victories, they don’t ask how - just how many.

Not that the how didn’t have its own special appeal - going back to the very beginning, when the Cougs spotted UCLA a 7-0 head start because Hicks ran 92 yards over the spot where Bender should have been but wasn’t. WSU coach Mike Price had him doing penance on the sideline for sassing a ref in last fall’s Apple Cup.

It made for plenty of irony at game’s end, when Bender was there and Hicks wasn’t - having asked out because of exhaustion when he was needed the most.

Skip Hicks? Try Skip Town.

“I’ve never heard of an All-American asking out - maybe if his team’s up by 30,” cackled Bender. “I guess that’s the way they do it at UCLA.”

“Who worked harder in the summer?” sneered Cougar quarterback Ryan Leaf. “Who was ready to win?”

There wasn’t much debate even from Price.

“We have a lot of things to work on,” he said, “but one of the things we don’t have to work on is our character or our heart.”

That, of course, will be tested more severely in November than August, but the first order of business for any football team is to make November meaningful. In that context, what the Cougs accomplished between the dramatic bookends of Hicks’ debut and his disappearance may have been the real revelation.

Wazzu reeled off 27 unanswered points after falling behind 14-3, mixing a reliable running game with some spectacular deep completions - a rare parlay these past four years. The offensive line held up fine, though UCLA’s defense won’t torture anyone this season. Leaf - with four completions of 49 yards or longer - was splendid, so much so that up in the ABC booth, Cougar alum Keith Jackson called him “Bledsoe” for a series.

If anybody played better, it was Leaf’s targets.

“The Fab Five is as advertised,” crowed flanker Shawn McWashington.

Hmm. Was it the agency in Coeur d’Alene handling that campaign, too?

For the Coug receivers, it seems, there is no promotion except self-promotion. The cover of the Wazzu media guide is plastered with “All-America candidates,” but none split wide.

“We’re definitely underrated,” said Nian Taylor, “except by ourselves.”

This may change. Taylor caught 200 yards worth of passes, punishing UCLA across the middle when the safeties were preoccupied pressuring Leaf. Jackson took a short flip 79 yards for a touchdown. McWashington, Shawn Tims and tight end Love Jefferson had critical long catches.

“Ryan’s getting a lot of the prestige, and deservedly so,” said Jackson. “A lot of people don’t realize how good we are. I don’t think there’s a lot of teams that can cover our receivers man to man.”

And, surely, they have no bigger fan than Leaf.

“We have receivers who can pretty much do anything they want to do out there,” Leaf said.

“We communicate so well. It wasn’t like that last year. We wouldn’t have won this ballgame last year - we just wouldn’t.”

They didn’t. The Bruins rolled 38-14 and Cougar receivers had eight drops. In the meantime, they spent the summer in Pullman with Leaf, honing their timing, rhythm, communication and technique.

“They’re improved,” Price acknowledged, “but so is Ryan.

“He didn’t throw takeoffs like that before. He’d wobble it up there sometimes. Now he’s throwing that tight spiral, and he was hitting Nian right on stride.

“And you can throw that pass quickly. You don’t have to protect it a long time. You think a long pass takes a long time, but you can take five or three quick steps and go. You can throw them as fast as you can a hitch to the outside. It’s inside passes, curls, that you have to wait for them to develop.”

Still, even with all those yards - 381, more than Leaf has ever passed for before - and all those touchdowns, the Cougs did have to wait for, well, developments.

“But I knew we weren’t going to lose,” Leaf insisted. “We didn’t deserve to lose that game the way we played.”

To the last drop, he meant. Not like … oh, Skip it.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review