Running strong

PULLMAN — It’s taken five games, but it appears that Washington State is finally discovering a running game. Using a combination of Jerome Harrison, Chris Bruhn and Allen Thompson, the Cougars rushed for 143 yards on 26 carries, an average of 5.5 per carry.

Harrison, a junior college transfer in his first year with the Cougars, had by far the most success. The Kalamazoo, Mich., native ran for 117 yards on 14 carries, including one 43-yard scamper and a one-yard touchdown plunge.

“I feel a lot more comfortable now than I did in that first New Mexico game,” said Harrison, who appears to be living up to the adage that it tends to take junior college players a few games before they get comfortable. “Each game, it begins to slow down. The movements slow down and you can go through your reads quicker and better.

“When I first got here it was just so fast of a pace. Everything was flashing quick. But now it’s just going back to my junior college world where I knew where the D-line and the linebackers were going.”

On his touchdown, Harrison leapt into the air over a pile of lineman, something he said he had never attempted before – with good reason.

“I usually try and not jump because I used to watch Walter Payton do it and I’d think that it looks like that hurts. So I try and stick to the ground,” Harrison said. “When I was up there, I was thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t want to come down like Walter used to.’ So surprisingly, someone was underneath me. I really wish I would have thanked them but I didn’t see who it was. I was nervous up there.”

Head coach Bill Doba indicated before the Oregon game that the running backs would share carries and Bruhn would continue to start, but Harrison seems to be getting a larger share of the work each week.

Return to sender

Another bright spot from the Cougar loss was the play of freshman Michael Bumpus, specifically a 52-yard punt return for a touchdown that gave WSU a 13-point lead in the closing minutes of the third quarter.

The Southern California native also caught a two-point conversion on the Cougars’ next score, giving them a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter.

The punt return was somewhat of a gift, as Oregon’s David Dittman had boomed a long punt that Bumpus dropped and let roll out of bounds. But that 66-yard kick was called back on an illegal formation penalty – one of 13 Oregon infractions on the day. And on Dittman’s next kick, Bumpus got the ball on the right sideline and hit paydirt.

“I know I saw a lot of red jerseys hitting white jerseys and I just saw a hole,” Bumpus said. “Really I was just trying to make up for the one I dropped before that.”

The freshman eluded five tacklers along the sideline, and actually appeared to step out of bounds at one point, though the referees didn’t think twice about giving him the score.

But Bumpus, like his teammates, was disappointed that the run back didn’t seal a victory.

“A lot of us thought it was a back-breaker,” he said. “It just goes to show that you can’t stop playing when you’re up 14 or when it’s the fourth quarter. It’s a lesson learned, and I’m pretty sure it won’t happen again.”

Two isn’t always better than one

Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti made what could be called a curious decision to go for two points with his team trailing 38-34 with five minutes to play.

An extra point would have put his team within three points, but Bellotti justified the decision – one that became moot when the Ducks tacked on another touchdown 3:39 later – saying he wanted to put his team in a position to win, not tie.

The Ducks failed to convert when Kellen Clemens was pressured by WSU and threw up an incompletion.

“Win the game, go for the win,” Bellotti said of his strategy. “If we get a chance to kick a field goal, we want it to be for the win, not the tie.”

Notes

Despite his injured shin, Troy Bienemann suited up in case of an emergency and did go in to long snap on the Cougars’ final punt of the day. … WSU didn’t give up a single sack in 36 pass attempts. The Cougars have given up just one sack in the last three games. … Oregon’s Haloti Ngata blocked the fifth kick of his career in the third quarter when he got a hand on a Loren Langley extra point. … Jason Hill now has eight touchdowns on 17 receptions this season.