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

Cougs pull another rabbit out of helmet

John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review

TUCSON, Ariz. – It is not a question of the glass being half empty or half full.

What the Washington State Cougars do is fill it with a fire hose, knock over the glass, splash the contents on themselves, then wring a precious few drops from their soggy duds into a crumpled Dixie cup and toast their latest assault on the laws of probability and propriety.

WSU 20, Arizona 19. When the going gets weird, Wazzu gets going.

“Being a Coug,” shrugged tight end Troy Biennemann, “you get used to stuff like this.”

Really?

OK, sure. The whoopee cushion stopped being avant-garde about five minutes after it was invented, too, but everybody still jumps when you slide one under their tushies.

In the Cougars’ most unlikely escape since their last one, they managed to disguise their surprise at an Arizona play that probably shouldn’t have been called, take the opportunity to blast the football into a shocking and eerie flight, fall on it and then deposit it in the end zone for the winning touchdown before Keith Jackson could catch his breath and bellow, “Whoa, Nellie!”

All in the game’s final 90 seconds.

What was surely lost had suddenly been won, and while the Cougs almost to a man professed that the faith had been kept all along, the man who threw the winning pass – WSU quarterback Josh Swogger – confessed that, “A lot of us kind of did think it was over.”

Which just goes to show you – the important thing is probably to not think.

“You can say all you want about the turnovers and everything,” Biennemann protested, “but when it comes down to it, we capitalized on their mistakes and that’s why we won the game.”

Well, yes, and the telling mistakes were made by a rookie head coach with the sideline manner of Chris Kattan doing Mr. Peepers on “Saturday Night Live.”

Mike Stoops has conjured remarkable magic in resuscitating the Wildcats from John Mackovic’s footwipes to feisty underdogs, but you have to wonder if his over-the-top gyrations and emotions don’t occasionally distract him from the game’s ebb and flow.

Take the third quarter. The Wildcats had put Wazzu on its heels with a 7-minute drive during which all but 14 of the 74 yards were covered on the ground, and taken a 13-7 lead. Stopping the Cougs cold on the next series, Arizona took over again – and inexplicably put the ball in the air three consecutive times. When the Wildcats got it back again – still nursing that lead – again they tried to throw it, which they’d done ineffectually all day. The momentum wasted, they were mostly spectators as Swogger drilled strikes to Marty Martin and Jason Hill for a go-ahead touchdown.

That didn’t hold up, of course, but neither did Arizona’s final TD – because Stoops didn’t get conservative quickly enough. With a fresh first down and just those 90 seconds remaining, the Wildcats didn’t take a knee and force WSU to use its timeouts – and thus Gilbert Harris was out there fighting for an extra yard when Cougs linebacker Pat Bennett blasted the ball to kingdom come.

“If the clock would have been down to 1:10,” Stoops insisted, “we would have taken a knee.”

Well, fine. But his defense to that point had surrendered just 14 points and 282 yards. Even if a few ticks remained after three knees, wouldn’t you feel pretty good kicking it and making the erratic Cougs go 80 yards with no timeouts?

Stoops can spend a bye week mulling over that question. The Cougs can spend theirs healing up and pondering all the possibilities, being 3-1 and halfway to a bowl game – or to a date with the gravedigger.

The likelihood is, the Houdini stuff is less apt to hold up the deeper the Cougars get into their schedule against what should be better, if not daunting, opposition. No one seemed to grasp this better than offensive coordinator Mike Levenseller – who while happy enough to fly home a winner, saw the fine line clearly enough.

It is, after all, more than a third of the way into the season, and the Cougs continue to play patty-cake with the football – and were back to their old penalty prone ways.

“We’re getting to the point where we have to look ourselves in the mirror and say it’s time to grow up,” Levenseller said. “It’s time this stuff stops. I guarantee you, it’s addressed every week. But if it has to be addressed every week, then you eventually figure out who you don’t have to keep talking to.

“Somebody has to take jobs over. The only one really who’s like that right now is the quarterback and we’ve made the declaration that Josh is the guy – and Jason Hill. But we don’t have a lot of other positions (on offense) where we’re not rotating people in there, and we need guys to step up and make a play. It’s time.”

That’s the half empty part – the fact that much of the time, this was a game being decided by the plays not made. Much of the focus was on the fumbles – and they were crippling. But just as bad was Kyle Basler bailing the Cougars out with the most spectacular punt in WSU history – 87 yards – only to see Arizona in the end zone seven plays later.

“There were opportunities,” WSU defensive coordinator Robb Akey acknowledged. “Even Arizona’s touchdown in the first half – that was an interception opportunity for us.”

But every moment counts, and the Cougs did have theirs – Jeremy Bohannon’s big stop near the goal line and Will Derting’s sack, both of which turned potential Arizona touchdown drives into field goals. The touchdown passes to Hill were special, but so was freshman Michael Bumpus’ catch before the game-winner – and Swogger’s resolve to deliver it while wearing UA’s Pat Howard as a sarong.

“Never count us out,” cautioned WSU running back Jerome Harrison. “People probably turned the channel on us in the New Mexico game. That was a mistake. Same thing today. Better not do that unless you see both zeroes on the clock.”

Marveled Akey, “They’ve got a great belief – a great expectation. Now we just need to play better so we’re not always in this situation.”

Not always in this situation. Right.