Blanchette: Apple Cup demands passion and Cougars showed little

SEATTLE – Just wondering: How did the Washington State Cougars manage to stack so many proud volumes on victory neatly on the shelf this season and keep them upright between bookends made out of overcooked pasta?

Did Mike Leach inadvertently recycle the Portland State game plan for Black Friday’s date with rival Washington?

How does a team that did so much right this season have such a special touch when getting it all wrong?

And how many bowl reps were speed-dialing Oregon, Utah and UCLA in the fourth quarter?

While you’re mulling those questions, consider now that in four meetings with Washington, Leach’s Cougars have gone from rallying to win after trailing by 18 points to three consecutive losses, each worse than the one before – and this one a humiliation even fielding his best team.

If this keeps up, the Pac-12’s TV schedulers will relegate the Cougs and Dawgs to the dreaded Saturday-at-2-p.m. time slot of shame with the other JV pairings. And the apple growers will be second-guessing their sponsorship.

Hey, they can always call it the HIPAA Cup.

Even now, there are pockets on Planet Coug where Friday’s 45-10 drubbing at the hands of the Huskies in their 108th meeting with Wazzu is being rationalized in an if-only-Luke-had-played rosary, lamenting concussed starting quarterback Luke Falk.

And which may be the Alamo Bowl of point-missing.

This was a meltdown of epic and all-encompassing proportions, and Leach wasted no breath in reaching that conclusion.

“Most of our problems go back to coaching, starting with me and all of us coaches – we need to find a way to coach these guys better,” he insisted. “We didn’t have them prepared to play. That was the most glaring thing.”

Across the field, UW coach Chris Petersen was enjoying being able to say this:

“It was our most-prepared game, emotionally. I was really hoping they were going to play good because I knew that they were all in.”

The Cougs weren’t even half in. From preparation, the malaise spread to Wazzu’s normally reliable receivers and backs, to the defense that was a footwipe on third-and-much and treated UW’s splendid freshman Myles Gaskin as if he were radioactive and to the kick-return team which, Leach noted, has yet to deliver a block.

And, no, first-time quarterback starter Peyton Bender did nothing to turn Falk into Wally Pipp.

“As we collapsed as a team,” Leach noted, “he collapsed.”

Two pick-6s, two fumbles and assorted misfires – yes, the day turned into a nightmare for Bender, who said he knew last Sunday that he’d start in place of the injured Falk, despite Leach’s public charade. The mushrooming turnovers became comical, though in fact four occurred after the score had already reached 31-10 and were relevant only in snuffing any 2012-ish comeback.

No, Bender’s burden was not getting the Cougs into the end zone on four trips inside the Husky 30 in the first half – though only one ended with his turnover. Drops by veterans Dom Williams and Gabe Marks and Keith Harrington’s fumble were just as damaging.

“We’ve clearly beaten teams that were considerably better than Washington this year,” Leach complained, “but the thing about it is, we go in here wide-eyed and somehow think it’s special and make more of it than it is.”

Really? Because mostly it looked like the Cougars hardly made anything of it.

Never was that more apparent than when a takeaway of their own helped get the Cougs into the end zone and cut the lead to 24-10. The defense’s response: surrendering an 84-yard touchdown drive, with Gaskin getting 55 of it on the ground.

What that had to do with Falk’s injury and HIPAA regulations and Leach’s obsession with talk of that sort of thing being a petri dish for excuse-making, well, who can know? The fact is, discussing Falk’s status at large wasn’t going to make it any more of a fact than it already was in the Cougar locker room – and the coach himself knows the solution.

“One of the biggest steps as a team is that you have to have the toughness to move past that,” he said, “to transcend that.

“We’ve got to be a tougher team.”

The Cougars were the antithesis of tough in that opening loss to Portland State, an embarrassment that could have defined the season. Instead, they found a vein of toughness in the late drive to beat Rutgers, and built on it weekly until the win total remarkably reached eight and they’d become the surprise of the Pac-12.

And then came the blackest Friday.

“We just didn’t show up today,” said tackle Cole Madison. “That wasn’t us. We waited for it to come to us and it never did.”

So the coaches didn’t have them prepared?

“I guess not,” he said. “It showed on the scoreboard.”

Maybe the Cougars need to make more of the Apple Cup than they do. People in these parts must care about it for a reason.