Sunburned!
TEMPE, Ariz. – Washington State traveled to the desert this weekend knowing just how valuable a win would be.
And then it played as if that didn’t matter one bit.
Instead of rebounding from an embarrassing home defeat against Arizona the week before, the Cougars walked through the Sun Devil Stadium tunnel and got flattened by Arizona State, 47-14, leaving their bowl hopes in doubt for yet another week.
The Cougars (6-5, 4-4 Pac-10) allowed a Sun Devil football team that had lost by nearly five touchdowns seven days earlier to score on all six of its first-half possessions, good for a 30-7 halftime edge.
“We created a hole very fast that was too deep to get ourselves out of,” defensive coordinator Robb Akey said. “And generally when something like that happens, it’s magnified by how quick it happens.”
WSU allowed Arizona State to score on its first drive of the third quarter as well, and it wasn’t until a Husain Abdullah interception halfway through that same period that WSU’s defense walked off the field without allowing a score. The Sun Devils (6-4, 3-4) scored again on their ninth possession, making it 8 of 9. They finished the game having scored on nine out of 11 possessions.
“I didn’t see this coming, to be quite honest with you,” head coach Bill Doba said. “I really don’t have any excuses. I don’t know what the heck happened until we take a look at the tape. But we had guys running free in the secondary, we had guys missing tackles, and offensively we got no push from the offensive line.”
Even still, WSU should still be in good shape to make a bowl if it can defeat Washington in the Apple Cup next week. But a third consecutive loss to finish the Cougars season would leave them at .500, and after both Arizona and UCLA won on Saturday it appears increasingly likely that a 6-6 finish won’t be enough to make a postseason appearance.
“If we don’t play any better than that, we don’t deserve to go to a bowl game,” Doba said.
The Huskies are on a six-game slide but WSU will be going for a third consecutive win over its archrival, something never accomplished before by the Cougars.
The Cougars now face a must-win against Washington, but they spoke all week as if they viewed the Arizona State game in a similar light.
Remarkably, the Cougars appeared to be sleepwalking through this vitally important contest. Not only were the Cougars beaten physically by Arizona State from the opening possession, it appeared that WSU was never in the game mentally, either.
In the second quarter, already up 27-7, the Sun Devils lined up in punt formation on a fourth-and-1. Arizona State sometimes lines up in punt formation with its offense on the field, with quarterback Rudy Carpenter punting or running a fake. Considering the score, Doba said he anticipated Carpenter would punt.
He didn’t. And the sophomore fired a pass to tight end Zach Miller, who gained 12 yards en route to another Sun Devil score.
“One man out of his position, touchdown,” defensive end Mkristo Bruce said of the game in general. “I think every single person on the field had a mishap, and they capitalized on it.”
Against WSU’s two-deep zone, Carpenter threw to receivers running deep corner routes. And Miller was wide open all night, both underneath and down the field.
Carpenter exited early in the fourth quarter with 339 yards passing on just 15 completions, three of them good for touchdowns.
WSU’s offense, meanwhile struggled badly with wide receivers Jason Hill and Michael Bumpus staying behind in Pullman because of injuries.
The Cougars managed a season-low 192 yards, just 27 of them coming on the ground. WSU punted seven times, while Arizona State never got any closer to punting than the second-quarter fake.
“We still have the belief that we’re a good football team,” quarterback Alex Brink said. “But we flat-out got embarrassed.”
And now, after a 6-3 start, the Cougars will have to take care of business against the Huskies to avoid an even greater embarrassment, one that could last through a long off-season.
“This,” Bruce said, “is gut-check time.”