Cougs flirt with disaster

SEATTLE – For the Baylor Bears, the difference between winning and losing may have come down to two fumbles.

One they got, the other they didn’t.

The first was the most visible play of the game – and one of the loudest.

The Cougars’ Michael Bumpus had just caught a 9-yard pass from Alex Brink and was headed up the field. WSU led 14-9, there was a little more than 5 minutes left, and Bumpus thought he was about to ice the game.

“I saw the guy in front of me,” Bumpus said when asked if he saw the hit to come, “and I thought I was out the gates after I made him miss.”

But Bumpus didn’t make anyone miss, especially not linebacker Nick Moore.

The junior, pursuing from the other side of the field, closed fast and unloaded into the unsuspecting Bumpus from the blindside.

“Whoever it was, it was a great play,” said an admiring Bumpus, no worse for the explosion.

“It was definitely the biggest hit I’ve had at the college level,” Moore said.

And it could have been the most important.

Moore’s blow knocked the ball free. It bounced into the arms of cornerback Anthony Arline, who weaved his way down the right sideline and into the end zone, giving Baylor a 15-14 lead. There was 5:24 left.

“I definitely thought it would win the game for us after Anthony picked it up for the touchdown,” Moore said of his play.

But it wouldn’t hold up, because of another fumble the Bears thought they recovered but didn’t.

The Cougars answered Arline’s go-ahead score by marching 80 yards. The drive put them on the Baylor 2-yard line with a little more than a minute left. Only a miracle would save Baylor now.

So the Bears tried to steal one.

After Baylor’s final timeout, DeMaundray Woolridge tried the right side. Cornerback C.J. Wilson crashed down, putting his head on the ball. The ball popped loose. And the Bears’ Joe Pawelek emerged from the pile with it.

“Joe Pawelek said the ball landed between his legs,” Moore said, “and I talked to the ref and the ref said it was ruled a fumble, but he said (the Cougars) recovered it. But when we got out of the pile, Joe was holding the ball.”

The Bears were out of timeouts, so they couldn’t challenge the call. There was no booth review either. The ruling stood. Three plays later Loren Langley put the Cougars on top for good with a 17-yard field goal.

What’s the plan?

Reserve quarterback Gary Rogers again went in for a series in the middle of the game and again he led WSU to a touchdown, just as he did against Auburn and Idaho. This time, however, Rogers stayed in the game for a second series.

Rogers threw an interception on his second series near the end of the first half, and Doba said after the game that had Rogers led WSU to another score he would have stayed with the younger quarterback in the second half.

“Gary went back in and threw the pick,” Doba said. “If Alex had really struggled (in the third quarter), we’d have gone back in with Gary again. But we thought Alex was doing OK.

“We don’t talk about hot hands. We’re not talking about playing poker, we’re playing football.”

And Brink ended up catching a big touchdown pass after re-entering the game. Running back Dwight Tardy took a pitch from Brink, then turned and threw it back to a wide-open Brink, who coasted into the end zone for a 4-yard, third-quarter score.

Earlier in the game, WSU had tried a similar play but Brink slipped going for Tardy’s throw and had to fall on the ball for a 14-yard loss.

Line change

In 2005 the Cougars played all but one snap with the same group of five offensive linemen. Not so on Saturday.

Redshirt freshman center Kenny Alfred went in for starter Josh Duin in the game’s second series and played the rest of the way. And starting left tackle Bobby Byrd suffered an MCL sprain in his right knee, forcing reserve Derek Hunter in for almost the entire second half.

“We try to mix it up in practice and get people to work with each other,” said left guard Sean O’Connor, who plays between Byrd and Duin. “As long as we communicate, it really doesn’t matter who we have in there. Obviously, it’s nice to have Bobby, but Derek came in and played great.”

Line coach George Yarno said he wanted to see Alfred in for a game to find out if he was capable of being a starting center, and Alfred seemed to respond with a solid effort.

The severity of Byrd’s injury is unknown, although he spent the rest of the game standing on the sideline with an icepack around the injured knee.

Notes

The attendance for Saturday’s game was 41,358, the lowest of WSU’s five Qwest Field games by nearly 9,000. …. The Cougars are now 4-1 playing on the Seahawks’ home turf. … Doba admitted to a clock management gaffe in the final seconds. The head coach called timeout with 14 seconds left when he could have allowed the clock to run down so the game-winning kick would have come with no time left. Instead, Baylor got the opportunity to return the ensuing kickoff for a score. “Where I screwed up is I should have let the clock run down and kicked it with 2 seconds to go,” he said.