John Blanchette: Cats made sure yolk on Cougs

PULLMAN – So it’s not true after all. Winning doesn’t make you smart.

In fact, it’s just as likely to make you silly.

And no one feels sillier at the moment than the Washington State Cougars, who were so busy counting their chickens on Saturday afternoon that they … they … they what?

“We laid an egg,” said guard Sean O’Connor.

Yes, thank you.

The yolk was certainly on the Cougars: a 27-17 smackdown administered by the Arizona Wildcats, the odor of which could not be washed away even by a steady rain that soaked Martin Stadium and the 35,117 witnesses, many of whom bailed at halftime to pursue better – but not necessarily drier – Dad’s Day activities.

The lesson was elementary and, as such, embarrassing. That the Cougs were evicted from their new digs in the Top 25 before they even had a chance to furnish the place is the least of it.

They were uninspired, outprepared, unmindful, inefficient and, yes, unlucky.

Worst of all, they were smug.

“We thought we were through the meat of our schedule and that everybody we had left to play had losing records, or whatever,” said safety Husain Abdullah, “so we were probably going to roll through.”

Really?

“We were all kind of looking down the road at bowl games,” admitted defensive end Mkristo Bruce, “rather than looking at Arizona.”

This is a level of honesty rarely detectable in a college football locker room, so the Cougs get some credit for self-awareness, but obviously not enough to balance out the foolishness of it all. For the team that has been so happily underestimated all season long to decide – at this juncture of the season – to pay it forward is astonishing. Or maybe not. We are talking about barely 20-somethings, after all.

And at it should be pointed out that this doesn’t happen without eager and able co-conspirators – which is to say if the Wildcats don’t elevate their game on Saturday, the Cougs might have got away with it.

The first suggestion that this wouldn’t be the case came exactly three plays into the game, when the Wildcats split five receivers wide and quarterback Willie Tuitama found Anthony Johnson streaking down the middle, with linebacker Greg Trent in solo pursuit because Abdullah and fellow safety Eric Frampton had vacated the premises. Seventy-eight yards later, the Wildcats had a one-touchdown lead.

It didn’t hold up – the Cougs bounced back to go ahead 10-7 shortly thereafter – but the metaphor did.

The Cougars couldn’t make stops on third down or convert their own. They couldn’t run the ball and couldn’t consistently stop the Wildcats, who – if you toss out stats padded against Stephen F. Austin and hapless Stanford – had rushed for exactly 84 yards in their other six games. Saturday, they had 116. Arizona threw exactly one pass in the fourth quarter, and on third-and-17 with the Cougs needing the ball back, Chris Henry broke off a draw play for 19 yards.

“Very disappointing,” said defensive coordinator Robb Akey, diplomatically. Stronger language could be heard in the tunnel after the game.

Ankle injuries to standout receivers Jason Hill and Michael Bumpus took away WSU’s only real big-play threats as the Cougs played catch-up in the second half. And when they still appeared poised to be able to overcome both fate and themselves, the Cougars resorted to some of the same desperate, ill-conceived strategy that so often submarined them last year.

Indeed, the fake punt the Cougars tried after closing the gap to 20-17 in the third mirrored some of the circumstances – fourth-and-2, about 10 yards into Arizona territory – that marked the game-turning goof in last year’s loss at Cal. This one was so well sniffed out that punter Darryl Blunt was buried by not one tackler, but three.

“I thought we had momentum,” said coach Bill Doba. “But that gave them a short field and that wasn’t fair to our defense.”

This might be a page in the playbook better off burned.

The game film, too. The Wildcats had scored more than 17 points against a Division I-A opponent exactly once this year – at Stanford. The Cougs, having become bowl eligible last week, apparently decided they were vacation eligible, too.

Which could still be the case yet, though losses by Arizona State, UCLA and Washington on Saturday all helped the Cougars’ cause, if not their outlook.

“We felt like we were going to win out and had some things planned,” said Bruce. “It kind of hurts right now.”

It should. Given the Cougars’ ranking and the Wildcats’ reeling, this was arguably Wazzu’s most embarrassing loss since the 24th-ranked Cougs fell to 3-6 Oregon State in 1994 – although those Apple Cup losses in 2002 and 2003 stung, too.

“We’d better learn something from this one,” said Doba.

Now that they’ve learned to win, they need to learn how to handle winning.