Cougars come from behind to lose
BERKELEY, Calif. – The Cougars were supposed to be writing a new script Saturday night at Memorial Stadium. Down 18 points at halftime, it was Washington State University’s turn to make a valiant second-half comeback, its turn to grab victory from likely defeat.
The script looked pretty good as the 28-10 halftime deficit turned into a 38-28 fourth-quarter lead. But too much time remained.
So it was that the script flipped on WSU once again, and it was California making the comeback – the one that mattered in the end – scoring twice in 3 minutes and 29 seconds. The second score, the game’s last, came with just 1:50 left and it gave the Golden Bears a 42-38 Pac-10 football win before 52,569 in Memorial Stadium.
Another fourth-quarter loss, a third lead blown in the last four weeks, was apparently too much for some Cougars to take. Head coach Bill Doba slammed his foot down onto a chair in the tunnel before speaking to the media, unable to bottle the frustration that the Cougars’ season has supplied in buckets.
“They’re a great bunch of kids,” Doba said. “They haven’t been able to win. Maybe they’re not good enough. I don’t know. And I don’t have the answers.”
At 3-4, the Cougars find themselves less than .500 for the first time all season. At 0-4 in the Pacific-10 Conference, they find themselves buried under an avalanche of conference foes they think they could beat, if only for a few more late-game plays.
The 10-point lead evaporated after a WSU fake punt attempt failed with 6 minutes left. Cal responded with a 57-yard score from Joe Ayoob to LaReylle Cunningham two plays later. A Cougars three-and-out at the worst possible time gave Cal the ball back with time to spare, and it capitalized again on a 9-yard throw from Ayoob to Lavelle Hawkins to take the lead back and cement the game.
A Cougars 2-minute drill came up short as a fourth-and-11 resulted in a 1-yard desperation flip from Alex Brink to Brandon Gibson.
The Bears (6-2, 3-2), who had started the game on a two-game losing streak, earned themselves a much-needed win before a bye week.
WSU had taken the lead thanks to wide receiver Jason Hill, who grew up across the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and put on a show for the dozens of personal supporters he had in attendance. Hill caught three touchdown passes in the third quarter and finished with 240 receiving yards on the game.
All that came without the Cougars’ second-best receiving option on the field. Michael Bumpus limped off early in the third quarter with an apparent leg injury. The sophomore was taken to the locker room and watched the end of the game from the sideline in street clothes.
Before Hill’s heroics, the situation appeared disastrous in the second quarter, thanks largely to a WSU offense that not only failed to score but handed 14 points to Cal.
Quarterback Alex Brink, who had thrown for 178 yards on just four first-quarter completions, couldn’t hit on any second-quarter passes.
Of his seven incompletions in those 15 minutes, two were intercepted by California, one going for a touchdown and the other setting up another easy score.
At the half, Brink had completed just 4 of 18 passes. Largely as a result, WSU couldn’t keep the clock moving on offense and held the ball for just 8:45 seconds of the first half – and for 3:53 of the second quarter.
Cal left itself open to get beat by the deep ball by focusing on stopping WSU running back Jerome Harrison, who had but one long run of note.
Harrison managed to exceed the 100-yard mark for a 10th straight time, ending up with 162 yards on 26 carries.
Brink finished with 423 passing yards and five touchdowns, completing 18 of 39 throws.
But for Doba, there was little left but more questions, more frustration and another loss.
“You keep asking the same thing every week, what we’ve got to do in the fourth quarter,” he said, his voice beginning to tail away. “I don’t know. We’ve tried everything. We’ve worked them harder. … I don’t know. I’m sorry.”