Cougars break away
SEATTLE – Everything, he figured, was exactly the same save for one detail.
“We won,” Washington State quarterback Alex Brink said.
Again the Cougars played a close game while moving the ball offensively and giving up the occasional big play on defense. Once more they saw a game come down to the final minutes. And once more the last score would be the deciding factor.
But unlike the seven Pac-10 football games before it, five of them losses by fewer than five points, this one turned out differently. The Cougars, down by a field goal in the fourth quarter, drove down the field against their archrival. They converted two key third downs and scored on a 39-yard touchdown pass from Brink to senior Trandon Harvey. That, as it turned out, was enough to beat Washington and win the Apple Cup, 26-22.
And the Cougars, despite their 5-6 mark in 2004 and 4-7 record this year, became the first WSU group since 1982-83 to win consecutive games against the Huskies.
“Finally – finally is all I got to say,” head coach Bill Doba said. “We’ve been hanging in all year and playing close. We finally made the big play when we had to make the big play.”
Until that final drive – and the defensive stop that followed it to close out the game – this game was following the script of nearly every other Cougar game in recent weeks. WSU (4-7, 1-7 Pac-10) controlled the flow from start to finish, outgaining Washington 507-327 and holding the ball for more than 36 minutes. But the Cougars couldn’t turn their drives into points as they stalled before reaching the end zone, and Loren Langley missed 3 of 5 field goals.
And as a result the Huskies held the lead when WSU took the field on its own 20-yard line with 5 minutes and 31 seconds left.
Brink, starting his 16th game despite being a sophomore, hadn’t yet led the Cougars to a winning drive. But on Saturday afternoon before 70,713 Husky Stadium fans, Brink completed all four of his passes – two on third down to tight end Cody Boyd – as the Cougars moved down the field. Brink is the first quarterback in WSU history to start and finish two consecutive Apple Cup wins.
“They’ve been producing all year. They have,” senior linebacker Will Derting said. “At critical times they haven’t been producing as much as they were the whole game. But today, they did.”
The Cougars defense, which has struggled all season long, finally found an opponent it could handle in the Huskies (2-9, 1-7). Quarterback Isaiah Stanback was the lone threat with 163 passing yards and 43 on the ground.
But WSU was able to take advantage of Stanback’s inconsistent play – and a weak Washington running game – to stay off the field and give the offense ample opportunity to win the game. James Sims, who had run for 200 yards in a win the week before at Arizona, had just 50 against the Cougars.
“Guys being where they need to be,” defensive coordinator Robb Akey said. “Maybe we had a little bit more confidence when we went out there today and a strong desire to win for each other.”
WSU led 13-7 at the half thanks to another Brink touchdown pass and the two Langley field goals. That score could have held longer, but both teams fumbled on third-quarter punt returns and allowed a quick score for the opposition.
As a result, WSU had a 19-14 lead after three quarters – the fourth time they led going into the final quarter – but the Huskies quickly finished off a touchdown drive and successfully converted a two-point conversion to take the 22-19 lead that held until Harvey’s game-winning touchdown with 80 seconds left to play.
“This whole year, it’s been kind of down,” Harvey said. “Once we knew we weren’t going to a bowl game, it was real disappointing. Myself, I expected people to just kind of give up on us. Since we’re not going to a bowl game, there’s no point. But we’re trying to build something here.”
And while last year’s Apple Cup win did little to help the Cougars this season, they now enter another elongated off-season hoping that beating the Huskies can be a building block for the future. Next game: Sept. 2, 2006, at Auburn.