Cal Punter Has Cougs Practicing From Deep In Their Own Territory

Cal’s got this player. He’s 6-foot-3, 225 pounds, runs a 1.77 10-yard dash (the fastest on the team), was recruited to play linebacker at schools all over the west, is an All-America candidate, was a preseason All-American in Playboy, The Sporting News and Football News, has coaches in awe - “If I had a Heisman vote right now, I’d vote for him,” said Illinois coach Ron Turner - and is so sought after by the media that he had four interviews lined up back-to-back Wednesday morning. And he’s a punter. That’s right, a punter.

He’s Nick Harris, the best weapon the 1-2 Cal Bears have.

“The punter gives you terrible field position,” said WSU coach Mike Price. “They don’t try long field goals. They pooch the ball down. They’re not going to try a 42-yard field goal. He’s good from about 40. They’ll pooch punt, pin you down there.”

Ten of Harris’ 24 punts (41.6 percent) this season have been kicked from the opponents’ side of the 50, including punts from the opponents’ 33-, 32- and 30-yard lines. Seven of those punts have been inside the 5-yard line. Ten have been inside the 10.

“Last week we were on the 32 and the coach sent me into pooch it,” said Harris. “I can spit that far. But our defense is pretty good, so we stop them, their guy has to punt and then there we are with the ball back around the 50.”

“We have a whole tape called the `Coming out’ tape,” said WSU quarterback Jason Gesser. “It was like 35 minutes long. Every team they play was coming out on the 2-yard line and 5-yard line. I think Illinois was down there all day.”

Illinois, which has averaged 38 points against its other three opponents, only managed 17 against visiting Cal.

The senior had 10 of 12 punts downed inside the 15-yard line, including punts downed at the 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 9 and 10. “We’ve got a whole new package just for coming out of the end zone this week,” said Gesser. “We’ve got to stay confident and levelheaded, get to the 10-yard line and get that first down. Get some room and then we can work into our offense after that.”

Harris insisted that the past few weeks have just been an anomaly.

“That’s just the way it has played out.” In reality, that’s the way it has played out Harris’ entire career. As a freshman, he tied the Cal record with 77 punts. He broke that with 87 punts in 1998. Last year, he had 85 punts. Twenty-one percent of those punts have been downed inside the opponents’ 20-yard line.

Harris has 273 punts in his career for 11,898 yards. He needs to average just 5.9 punts and 131.1 yards per game down the stretch to break the NCAA record of Cameron Young of Texas Christian, who had 320 punts for 12,947 yards from 1976-79.

At the rate the Cal offense is going, Harris will get it. The Bears are ninth in rush offense in the Pac-10, eighth in pass offense, ninth in total offense and last in scoring offense.

The defense and Harris, on the other hand, played a major part in all of Cal’s four wins last year. Their leading scorer last year was cornerback Deltha O’Neal. He scored six touchdowns, four on interception returns, one on a punt return and one a kickoff return. Nobody else had more than three touchdowns.

O’Neal graduated so the Bears aren’t scoring as much this year. But Harris and the rest of the defense are still having to lead the way.

“The major problem we are having on offense is just not scoring points,” said Cal coach Tom Holmoe. “Maybe we’re being haunted by the past on offense.”