Price Tempers Bold Prediction Win Over Ucla Raises Expectations, But Not Enough To Give Cougars A Giant-Killer Label
Washington State coach Mike Price was busy trying to stomp out a potential brush fire Sunday afternoon.
Less than 24 hours after his Cougars had knocked off 16th-ranked UCLA 24-15 in their Pacific-10 Conference opener, Price tried to extinguish the sparks generated by senior defensive end Dwayne Sanders’ post-game prediction that the Cougars will beat No.2-ranked Nebraska when they travel to Lincoln for next Saturday’s 11 a.m. (PDT) inter-sectional showdown.
“I don’t know how much video Dwayne had watched on Nebraska before he made that statement,” Price said, “but I’d sure much rather have him make that statement than say, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to get killed by Nebraska by 50 points.’
“At least he’s confident, but I don’t think he’s watched any video or seen them play enough to really comment too much about their football team.”
Price added that Sanders was probably still caught up in the “euphoria” of having helped upset the Bruins.
“I think he felt good about his play and he should have, because he played good. I think (the statement) was just part of the over-zealous confidence and good feeling he had at that moment.”
Still, Price made it clear that he wants his players’ confidence at peak levels this week as they prepare for the unbeaten Huskers.
“I don’t want to be disrespectful to Nebraska and their program,” he said, “but I don’t want to oversell it, either - get our kids all worried about playing in that stadium or playing this ranked team or anything like that.”
“Hey, there’s a lot of ranked teams we’ve got to play this year and a lot of good football teams in a lot of difficult stadiums, besides Nebraska.”
When told that the word out of Lincoln was that WSU will present Nebraska with its greatest challenge to date, Price said the comments were probably made by “guys who haven’t seen us on video, either.”
Corn-who(?)-skers
It’s doubtful that Dwayne Sanders remembers much about the details of the last WSU-Nebraska game - a 19-10 Cougar upset in Lincoln back in 1977.
He was only three years old at the time.
But he has boned up on the unlikely history of the series to the point where he knows that WSU is 3-0 against the Cornhuskers.
“We’ve never lost to them,” he pointed out Saturday.
In fact, WSU is one of only two teams to have played Nebraska more than once and never lost. The other is Ohio State, and the Buckeyes are only 2-0 against the Cornhuskers.
Nebraska tray-tor?
The last time WSU played Nebraska, in 1977, the Cougars were loaded with inside information on the ‘Huskers.
Coach Warren Powers had just defected from Tom Osborne’s UN staff and several of his assistants had followed him to WSU from Lincoln.
Price, who was an assistant on Powers’ staff that year, won’t have such a luxury this time around. But he might be able to dig up a little dirt on the ‘Husker from cornerback Tray Crayton, who redshirted on Osborne’s national championship team last season before transferring to WSU this fall.
“I’m not going to say he is the scouting report,” Price said of Crayton, “but we are going to ask Tray about the (Huskers’) personalities. It’ll be helpful and interesting, maybe, just to hear some of his comments about some of their personnel and what they do. “
Price added, however, that it is unlikely Crayton will be able to provide detailed information on the Cornhuskers’ run-pass ratio in certain situations or how they block their sweep and trap plays or how often they have blitzed in the red zone the last three games.
“I don’t think Cray is going to be our secret weapon,” he admitted.
Injury update
Price said his team came out of the UCLA game in decent shape physically.
Cornerback Greg Burns re-injured a shoulder that has plagued him for most of his career. Running back Derek Sparks banged up his already bruised ribs and linebacker Johnny Nansen suffered a minor concussion.
But Price said only Burns is listed as questionable at this point.
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