Cougars end camp in Lewiston with a scrimmage
Washington State ended its Lewiston fall camp with an 85-play scrimmage on Wednesday and both sides had plenty to crow about afterwards. Running backs Gerard Wicks and Jamal Morrow had big days, so did Connor Halliday.
Still, the defense totaled eight sacks, a couple big hits and an interception.
Read more after the jump.
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Luke Falk and the second-team offense took the field first against the first-string defense, which made life fairly miserable on the redshirt freshman quarterback. Falk's first pass went to Kristoff Williams, who was stopped for a loss, his second went to Isiah Myers and his third went to safety Taylor Taliulu, who made the day's only interception. Falk stayed in and settled down, completing passes to River Cracraft and Calvin Green. His session ended when Darryl Monroe leveled running back Jamal Morrow on a quick pass out of the backfield, taking the freshman down for a loss.
Connor Halliday quickly put the offense back on top. I mean, really quickly. His first pass went to Rickey Galvin, who was all alone on the left side of the field thanks to a busted coverage from freshman Pat Porter. Galvin made the easy catch and walked in for a 50-yard touchdown.
Halliday stayed in and found Dom Williams for another touchdown and then hit Calvin Green for a short score.
Peyton Bender was up next with the third team offense. His first pass went to Galvin, who was cleaned up pretty forcefully by Paris Taylor. The defenders were taking full advantage of their second day of live hitting.
"You want to get your tackling right," Xavier Cooper said afterwards. "You can never simulate game speed but in these scrimmages we try to make it as live as possible so it 's good to come out here and be confident in your tackling and your ability."
Bender was under duress from the defensive line for much of his series, but he had a nice touch pass to John Thompson of about 30 yards following a sack by by Jeff Waldner and Hercules Mata'afa.
Gerard Wicks had one of the best plays of camp during Falk's next series, a 44-yard score that saw him break a couple arm tackles. Impressively, he followed that run by coming right back into the scrimmage and taking another handoff up the gut for eight yards. Falk finished the series with a short touchdown strike to Kristoff Williams.
While Wicks had the big plays -- and he had another run of 30-something yards -- Jamal Morrow was steady, scoring a pair of touchdowns and consistently fighting for five or so yards.
The first string offense typically did well against the backups, and the first string defense did well against the backup offense, with a couple exceptions.
"That's what we need to do," Halliday said. "We're going against the two defense and we took care of business like we should."
When the freshmen got in with the third string, however, the defensive line typically got the best of the young offensive linemen and Mata'afa in particular appeared to live in the backfield.
Final scrimmage stats are here.
