WSU rewind: In Potato Bowl win, LB Gavin Barthiel makes surprise start and cashes in against former team

PULLMAN – To understand one of the more fascinating subplots of Washington State’s season finale, a romp over Utah State in Monday’s Idaho Potato Bowl, you’ll have to stick with us for a second.

It’s a bit cumbersome to explain.

The story involves senior linebacker Gavin Barthiel, who has blazed quite the trail in his college career. A Florida native, he spent the first two seasons of his career at WSU, where he appeared in only five combined games from 2021 to 2022. Ahead of the next season, Barthiel transferred to Utah State, where he totaled 18 tackles, playing all 13 games in the 2023 campaign.

It’s unclear where Barthiel spent the 2024 season. He isn’t listed on the Aggies’ roster for that year, and he logged no snaps for any team. It’s possible he took a year off for any number of reasons.

In any case, for his senior season this fall, he returned to Pullman, where he didn’t see any meaningful playing time in the regular season, at least not on defense. He carved out a niche on special teams, but he was out of the rotation at linebacker. With several veterans ahead of him on the depth chart all season, Barthiel didn’t look particularly close to getting on the field on defense.

How quickly things change. With linebacker Parker McKenna out with an injury for Monday’s game, in came Barthiel, who started and logged a career-high 53 snaps. In the third quarter, he brought down USU quarterback Bryson Barnes for a sack, his first in more than two calendar years. He finished with four tackles, making the most out of the kind of playing time that had eluded him for years as a Cougar.

As a member of his former team, Barthiel punished his former team.

It’s a compelling story, not only because of Barthiel’s background, but also because of the way he burst onto the scene just about out of nowhere. He didn’t exactly make headlines during the regular season. His top play of the season came in WSU’s road loss to James Madison last month, when he combined with veteran linebacker Caleb Francl for a key fourth-down stop in the second half. That was one of two snaps Barthiel registered on defense in that game.

Otherwise, Barthiel’s name only came up a handful of times, most recently this weekend when former interim head coach Jesse Bobbit – who has now officially become former head coach Jimmy Rogers’ defensive coordinator at Iowa State – quipped about Barthiel. Bobbit was talking about senior safety Cale Reeder, who is playing with a cast on his left hand to protect an injury. Reeder said he was the best “cast catcher” on the team. Did Bobbit agree?

“Potentially,” Bobbit said. “I can tell you who’s not, and that’s Gavin Barthiel. He’s pretty rough. You’ll have to ask him about that.”

Bobbit laughed as he said that, underscoring the light vibe he helped foster around the team.

But maybe Bobbit knew something the rest of us didn’t: That Barthiel was poised for a heaping of snaps in Monday’s bowl game.

In his final collegiate game, Barthiel capitalized in the loudest of ways.