Trojans remain alert

PULLMAN – Pete Carroll sees it as a challenge.

It’s the type of challenge Paul Wulff would love to have.

When Carroll’s sixth-ranked Trojans take the Martin Stadium turf Saturday afternoon, they’ll do so as at least a 40-point favorite.

Carroll knows they’ve been in that territory before – and lost.

“Every week coaches are challenged by the fact that you have to find that level,” Carroll said this week about the possibility of USC playing without emotion in Pullman. “You can go out and play and then you can go out and compete and battle, and there’s a fine line between the difference there.

“But when you have it, you have it, when you don’t, you don’t, and we’ve seen that.”

It happened last year at home as a 41-point favorite against outmanned and unimpressive Stanford. Final score: Cardinal 24, USC 23.

Wulff’s Cougars are 1-6 overall, 0-4 in the Pac-10. They have been outscored 223-33 in those conference losses. They’ve given up 66 points twice – including last week at Oregon State – and 63 another time.

That’s markedly worse than Stanford was going into the Coliseum last October. The Cardinal were 1-4, 0-3 in the Pac-10, but had a win over a Football Bowl Subdivision school (San Jose State) and had scored as many as 31 points in a conference game. WSU’s high this year is 14.

Wulff understands the odds, though he’s said more than once he doesn’t care about them.

“You have to be on your best game and you have to catch them playing a bad football game to be able to be in the game,” he said of the Trojans. “That’s about where we are at and that’s where most people will be at in order to have a chance to beat them.”

Even when the Cougars play their finest, it hasn’t been good enough. Washington State turned in its best quarter of the Pac-10 season last week – two interceptions led to 13 unanswered points – and still lost 66-13 to the Beavers.

“They got a lot of turnovers in the early part of that game against Oregon State,” Carroll said. “They’ve done a lot of good things on both sides of the ball. They have really good schemes.

“It seems like they haven’t been able to hold up. They were playing tough in the UCLA game (a 28-3 WSU loss), as well, and they haven’t been able to hold up throughout the game.”

A big part of that, according to Wulff and seconded by Carroll, is caused by injury.

The offensive line’s woes have been well documented – the Cougars will probably start their sixth lineup in eight games Saturday – as has the quarterbacks – WSU turns back to a recovered Kevin Lopina this week, but has used four quarterbacks in seven games. For the past two weeks the top two running backs (Dwight Tardy and Chris Ivory) have been out. Now starting tight end Devin Frischknecht, their third-leading receiver, is out.

“I’ve been through, as a coach, some years where we’ve had a tremendous amount of injuries,” Wulff said. “But not this many.”

It’s caught up with them – on both sides of the ball.

“Our defense has been stressed because we’re not good enough on offense to take the pressure off them,” Wulff said.

“They just haven’t been able to maintain the same consistency throughout the games, and it catches up with them before it’s over,” Carroll said.

With that in mind, Wulff isn’t predicting a Stanford-like upset.

“I want to see them play hard,” Wulff said of his team’s goals. “We want to see them compete as hard as they can compete. And try to execute everything in their power to execute the game plan.

“That’s what we’re going to try to do.”