Vandals weren’t prepared

When it comes to practice, Idaho football coach Dennis Erickson tends to side more with Bobby Knight than, say, Allen Iverson.

By Erickson’s accounting, the Vandals not only lost Saturday – a 56-10 spanking administered by Washington State – but pretty much every day leading up to the game.

That’s a head-scratcher, even for a veteran coach like Erickson.

“I don’t know if they were satisfied with playing Michigan State close, but the intensity level and the preparation for Washington State – that’s as big a week as there is around here, to have an opportunity to play a Pac-10 team eight miles away – it’s unbelievable to me that you wouldn’t want to be prepared to play your best football game,” Erickson said. “Obviously, we weren’t, and that’s what bothers me.”

Erickson assumed his share of the blame, but he didn’t mince words when asked about the state of the team’s leadership.

“You can only do so much as a coach and then the players have to take over,” he said.

“If anything happened out of the week hopefully that’s it, that they learned a lesson and they’re going to take things over themselves.”

Defense delivers

Running back Ian Johnson’s 240-yard, five-touchdown performance in Boise State’s 42-14 rout of Oregon State overshadowed another stifling performance by the Broncos defense. OSU jumped in front 14-0 midway through the first quarter – one touchdown coming on a punt return – but failed to score the remainder of the game.

Of the Beavers’ 263 total yards, 85 came on the opening drive. BSU had six sacks and limited Oregon State to 58 yards rushing on 32 carries.

“One of the knocks on the defense in the past is we’ve been awesome stopping the run, but we’ve given up the long ball too frequently,” BSU coach Chris Petersen said. “Some of the coverage things (defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox) has brought has slowed the deep ball down a little bit. That’s the thing that’s helped us take the next step.”

BSU shut out Sacramento State in its opener.

Arms race

Two WAC quarterbacks are leading the nation in passing statistics. New Mexico State’s Chase Holbrook has 853 yards passing in two games, 135 in front of his closest pursuer. San Jose State’s Adam Tafralis, who nearly lost his starting job in fall camp, is completing 82.4 percent of his passes, tops in the nation.

Tafralis leads the WAC in pass efficiency (175.6), followed by Holbrook (161.9) and Boise State’s Jared Zabransky (160.4). Idaho’s Steve Wichman is eighth at 88.1.

Emotional return

Fresno State standout receiver Paul Williams will have a lot on his mind Saturday when the Bulldogs visit Washington in Seattle. Williams’ older brother, Curtis, was a UW safety who died in May 2002 from complications of spinal injuries he suffered while making a helmet-to-helmet tackle in October 2000. Another brother, J.D., is the Huskies’ secondary coach.

“I know it will a big game from an emotional standpoint for him,” Bulldogs coach Pat Hill said. “But he has to zero in on what he has to do, his assignments, and I believe he’ll come up and play very well for us.”

Curtis’ No. 25 is inscribed on the Husky Stadium sideline.

Notes

Erickson said running back Jayson Bird (knee) is questionable for Saturday’s game against Idaho State. He had an MRI on Monday. … The WAC lost three of five games against the Pac-10 last week. The WAC has four dates with Mountain West foes this week. … Just two weeks into the season, Boise State is the conference’s lone unbeaten. Louisiana Tech and Hawaii have only played one game, and lost them. … New Mexico State running back Justine Buries, the leading returning rusher in the WAC, is out for the season after suffering an apparent torn ACL in Saturday’s loss to New Mexico. … San Jose State knocked off Stanford in front of 29,321, the third largest crowd ever at Spartan Stadium.