Cougars piling up big numbers
Before everyone starts getting all excited about Washington State’s 45-17 rout of San Diego State on Saturday night in Seattle, consider a few things first.
The Aztecs were coming off a 3-9 season. They were picked to finish well back in the Mountain West Conference. Their secondary was almost completely new, the offensive line was missing its most experienced starter and 18 players – including the starting quarterback – who had some sort of surgery in the past year.
Did you consider all that? Now, if you’re a WSU fan, go ahead and get excited.
Because, pick as many nits as you like, Saturday’s performance by quarterback Alex Brink and his band of receivers was one for the record books. Literally.
Sure it came against a defense that was replacing seven starters, but when you rack up 654 yards in total offense – the fourth-highest Cougar total of all time and the most by Washington State since it had 675 against Utah in 1985 – it doesn’t matter if you are playing Duke, it’s impressive.
And it’s even more impressive when you consider the Aztecs did have four of their front seven back, and they rarely got close enough to Brink make him move his feet.
With all that time, Brink picked apart the virginal SDSU secondary.
“We’ve got a lot of experienced guys,” he said of the offense. “We only had to replace two tackles and those guys showed real early in camp they were ready to step up.”
Which allowed Brink to step up.
His 469 yards passing is the third best on the Cougars’ single-game list, trailing the 531 yards he put up against Oregon State as a sophomore and the 476 Drew Bledsoe hung on Utah in the 1992 Copper Bowl.
With Saturday’s performance, Brink has four of the top nine passing yardage games in Washington State’s history. And, besides the football, he’s also good at passing the credit.
“Once I got comfortable and the line was protecting like they were,” he said, “it was just going out there and playing pitch and catch.”
And the guys doing the catching were pretty impressive as well.
On Sept. 28, 2002, with Jason Gesser at quarterback, Jerome Riley (139 yards), Mike Bush (125) and Devard Darling (109) each had better than 100 yards receiving against Cal. WSU hasn’t had three receivers do it in the same game since.
Until Saturday. And, though the game wasn’t in Strawberry Canyon, it’s hard to believe the 2002 trio had more acrobatic catches than the ones Michael Bumpus, Brandon Gibson and Charles Dillon put on display.
When it was over Bumpus had 10 catches for 118 yards, Gibson seven for 116 (and two touchdowns) and Dillon had eight for 100.
That doesn’t even count the other seven guys who combined for 14 receptions and three touchdowns.
Sure, it all came against a defense with five guys making their first major college starts. But what the heck. Live a little. It’s still five days until the Idaho game.