WSU Cougs 1999 Season

*All articles are from the Lewiston Tribune Online unless otherwise noted.

1999 Season Results

Final Record: Overall: 3-9; Pac-10: 1-7

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Thursday, August 26, 1999

Cougars: a dash of seasoning

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- For Washington State fans who like to attach their vague hopes to a fresh name, a young messiah, a clean slate, there was a certain letdown this week when it was learned that Jason Gesser would not be the starting quarterback for the first game of 1999.
But the youth-idolizers still have Deon Burnett, whose slate could not possibly be cleaner. The new running back has a chance to do something almost preposterous in modern college football: start in a season-opener as a true freshman.
Thanks to Kevin Brown's ill-advised shopping spree in May, and to Jeremy Thiehlbahr's lingering hamstring injury, the only person who stands between Burnett and the No. 1 job is Adam Hawkins, a junior from Pendleton, Ore., who didn't carry the ball a single time in '98.
Every running play might be an adventure. And maybe that helps explain the Cougars' somewhat surprising decision to start Steve Birnbaum at quarterback in the opener Sept. 4 against Utah. Coaches aren't terming it this way, but perhaps the lack of experience at running back places a greater importance on steadiness at quarterback.
Birnbaum's knowledge of the offense will allow the Cougars to rely on their familiar pass-first attack, as opposed to the more traditional approach they inched toward in '98 with Brown at running back. A senior and second-year starter, Birnbaum also offers composure, size (he has beefed up his 6-foot-5 frame) and better arm strength than fans perhaps realize.
Yet he hasn't thrown a touchdown pass since last Oct. 3. When the Cougars adopted a quarterback rotation for the last four games of the season, Birnbaum in particular suffered from the disjointed rhythm. In any case, he has yet to prove his ability to light a fire under an offense.
It was during the Cougars' eight-game losing streak last year that Gesser, as a redshirt learning the system, became a focal point of Cougar fans' long-term hopes. He continues to be that. But in Brown's absence, Gesser's youth and lack of size (by WSU quarterback standards) work against him. The second-year freshman, with his intriguing mix of mobility and arm strength, will be Birnbaum's understudy for the opener.
That leaves junior Paul Mencke with the No. 3 role, the biggest disadvantage of which is its lack of repetitions in practice. In last year's rotation, Mencke provided far more spark than Birnbaum, but his 14 interceptions tended to come at maddening times.
The Cougars say they are serious about Mencke's possibilities at wide receiver, though he also remains in the QB mix. Other reserves include true freshman Matt Kegel, who "probably has the best feet of any quarterback since I've been here,'' offensive coordinator John McDonell said.
When Brown was handed a presumably one-year suspension this summer, after pleading guilty to felony residential burglary, the Cougars lost a big, durable running back who could offset the worries at quarterback by carrying 25 or 30 times a game.
It would be daft to expect a 5-foot-10 true freshman to fill such a workhorse role. But Burnett does appear to be durable. As a tough, gliding 210-pounder, the recent high-school graduate from the Los Angeles area is somewhat reminiscent of former WSU back Michael Black, though far less savvy at this point.
Listed No. 1 at the moment is Hawkins, a diligent 5-11, 205-pound back who carried 21 times in 1997 but played primarily special teams last year.
The depth chart will likely shuffle in the next couple of weeks as Thielbahr, the fullbackish sophomore from Sandpoint, recovers from his hamstring problem. He is more seasoned than his 12 career carries suggest.
Alvan Arzu, a junior, is another contender for playing time. Also in the picture is junior Brad Philley, who, in light of the Brown fiasco, volunteered to sacrifice his spot in the linebacker rotation to shore up the running-back corps

Friday, August 27, 1999

Receivers could make difference for Cougs; WSU newcomers Wynn, Williams should fit nicely with Taylor, Hackett

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Bad receivers, unlike bad quarterbacks, don't leave a trail of evidence. Their stats lie. The dropped passes, the wrong turns, the moments of downfield hesitation -- statistically, the QB takes the rap for them all.
But the fact is, Washington State's 25 interceptions and 207 incompletions last year were due partly -- partly -- to receivers who failed to get open, and whose lack of size left them little margin for error.
That should change. For one thing, the Cougars' junior-college recruiting yielded one Milton Wynn, a 6-foot-3 split end who so impressed his new teammates that he was the No. 1 draft selection for the 1999 spring game.
He is still struggling with technical matters, but Wynn boasts good speed for a 6-foot-3 receiver and should be a big-play threat.
Yet the sensation of fall camp has been Leaford Hackett, the agile 5-9 slotback who eventually became the Cougars' most reliable receiver last year as a JC transfer.
"We don't have anyone -- I'd be willing to say on the team -- but certainly on the offense, who works harder to make himself better than Leaford Hackett,'' offensive coordinator John McDonell said. "He's going to have a great season.''
And the Cougs still have, despite his academic and now legal travails, the estimable and fallible Nian Taylor, a member of the Fab Five in 1997 and the star of last year's show until being slowed by a leg injury. He still caught 45 passes for an 18.8-yard average.
Those are three good, diverse starters, and the Cougars can also wheel out a crane called Marcus Williams, a 6-5 JC transfer who is backing up Taylor at flanker.
Some of last year's young crew has slipped into the shadows. Jerry Roquemore is academically ineligible, and Jason White was suspended for his part in the Kevin Brown caper.
That has opened the door for Farwan Zubedi, a diligent and versatile 5-9 junior battling Wynn for a starter's spot.
The backup slotback is a true freshman, Collin Henderson, son of former WSU quarterback Jerry Henderson. His football background has allowed him to step immediately into the picture.
With Love Jefferson gone, the tight ends are inexperienced, but with talent that bodes well for future seasons. This year, improved senior Corey Scott (6-3, 245) is holding off a challenge by small but promising second-year freshman Russell Mizin (pronounced My-zin).
If these receivers stay healthy, the quarterbacks, even if they don't improve a lick, should have less embarrassing stats this year.

Saturday, August 28, 1999

Cougars have a familiar metier

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Washington State's offensive line is like a Top 40 disc. There's always at least one good song, right there at the start. In the Cougars' case, they always have a good left tackle.
This year's version is a converted guard, and it may take him a while to learn the new role, but 6-foot-7, 305-pound senior Ryan Tujague (pronounced TWO-jay) is beyond question the ace in the Cougars' hole.
The other starters are reasonably experienced, but the nagging preseason injuries of the Raymond twins underscore a possible depth problem. The Cougars do have good backup talent, but it's a tender shade of green.
If they're healthy, the twin towers from Moses Lake, both juniors, will man the right side of the line -- Ryan (6-7, 313) at guard and Reed (6-8, 316) at tackle. The latter, a starter last season, will be a key pass-protector as long as the left-handed Steve Birnbaum is the quarterback.
The center position looks solid with senior Lincoln Walden-Schulz (6-4, 285), who immediately solved the Cougars' QB exchange problems last year when he usurped the starting spot at midseason. He also has "unbelievable quickness,'' said offensive coordinator John McDonell said. "The only guy (in recent WSU history) to compare to him is Cory Withrow.''
At left guard is improved senior Joe Criscione (6-3, 285), who started twice as a fill-in last year.
If the Raymonds aren't ready for the opener Sept. 4 against Utah, the right-side starters would be freshman Phil Locker (6-5, 288) and senior Mike Schwarz (6-3, 295).
Other backups are freshman Derrick Roche, making a swift transition from defense, tough freshman Jason Hughes and junior Erik Larson, who will again do the long-snapping.
And although it does the Cougars no good this year, it's worth noting that coltish newcomer Billy Knotts of Vancouver, Wash., "is the best freshman offensive lineman I've ever had,'' said McDonell.
NOTE -- In Thursday's overview of the contenders for a running-back role, Alex Tinsley was inadvertently omitted. The swift junior is a former cornerback who played on special teams last season.

Sunday, August 29, 1999

Cougars thwart the stereotypes

Dale Grummert

It's a scraggly bunch -- a smallish end, a stumpy tackle. The two Greek columns are placed asymmetrically.
Classes? One of each. Freshman through senior.
But if they stay healthy and live up to expectations, Washington State's defensive line, and therefore the defense itself, should be a good one.
The Greek columns are senior tackle Rob Meier and sophomore end Mark Hedeen, both rangy and resourceful at 6-foot-6 and 270-plus.
Meier is a finished product, a 13-game starter who was impervious last year to the swarm of injuries that beset the front four. A British Columbian, he was the No. 1 choice in the Canadian Football League draft this year.
Hedeen is a project in the works, a fast and raw-boned pass-rusher who started twice last year as a true freshman. Bright future. "I'd like to buy stock in him,'' defensive coordinator Bill Doba said.
As stories go, however, Hedeen has been upstaged by Tomasi Kongaika, an unusually shaped (6-0, 282) Tongan from Alaska who enrolled as a walk-on last year, wowed the coaches in spring camp and landed a scholarship for this year. He has taken over the right-tackle spot as a second-year freshman.
The other starter is surprisingly effective junior strong-side end Austin Matson (6-3, 262), a former linebacker who started eight games last season.
The backups, too, should be solid when they're all in tow. Sophomore tackle Joey Hollenbeck should return to practice this week, after stepping on a broken bottle and undergoing surgery to remove the glass from his foot. Freshman tackle Eric Boose is suspended indefinitely, pending suspicions of marijuana use. He was arrested Aug. 2 but not charged.
In their absence, sophomore Ing Aleaga controls the backup role to Kongaika, and at 6-2 and 286 he will scarcely raise the center of gravity at that spot.
A three-man rotation is likely at end, with the experienced backup being hard-nosed senior Jesse Ratcliff. Eventually, when they learn the system, junior-college transfers Melvin Camarena and Anthony Adedipe should be in the picture as well.
So far, it might be added, the Cougars seem to have neutralized the 1998 hex that saw five players drop off the D-line roster for various nonfootball reasons, and numerous others succumb to injuries.

Sunday, August 29, 1999

Birnbaum tosses for 3 TDs in workout

PULLMAN -- Steve Birnbaum appeared comfortable in his newly appointed role as starter, as the Washington State quarterback threw for three touchdowns in the Cougars' final preseason scrimmage Saturday

Birnbaum, named the starter last week, connected on 17 passes for 212 yards. He hit Nian Taylor on a 7-yard scoring play early in the scrimmage. During that drive, he hit all six of his passes for 51 yards.
Later in the scrimmage, Birnbaum connected with Milton Wynn on a 9-yard scoring pass, then fired to Marcus Williams on a 60-yarder.
WSU, which opens at home on Saturday against Utah, also got solid quarterbacking from Jason Gesser, who completed 12 passes for 168 yards.
Paul Mencke pulled double-duty at quarterback and wide receiver. When he went behind center, he hit three of his five passes for 21 yards. When on the receiving end of six passes, he accounted for an additional 48 yards.
The nearly three-hour workout was a mock scrimmage, with the Cougar offense going against a scout team running Utah's defense. WSU's varsity defense squashed every drive by a squad of players operating Utah's offense.
"Utah didn't miss any tackles on defense; they are very good," head coach Mike Price joked after the "thud" scrimmage, as the Cougs call it. "I think it was one of the better mock scrimmages we have had before a game. We weren't perfect, but the execution was better than I anticipated."
Austin Matson, Curtis Holden and Grady Emmerson each had three solo tackles during the scrimmage, while Billy Newman and Anthony Matthews had two apiece. Two of Holden's solo stops were sacks while Rob Meier, Matson and Anthony Adedipe had one sack each.
"We did throw a couple of picks today and that is unfortunate," Price said, referring to Gesser's two miscues and Mencke's one interception. "We have to eliminate those. That is our No. 1 goal going into the season."
The Cougar running attack didn't put up impressive numbers, in part because of a patchwork offensive line. But Price did single out freshman Deon Burnett (34 yards) and converted linebacker Brad Philley (43 yards) for their work.
"We are a little beat up and scarred up on the offensive line," Price said. "We are coming along slowly. Obviously it would help if we had the Raymond twins (Reed and Ryan, both recovering from pulled muscles). Right now it is Phil Locker and Mike Swartz, the guys we are really leaning on."
With a week to go, Price doesn't expect a lot of contact work in the next six days. "We will gear down quite a bit and let the players get their legs back. We won't hit much. We will finish our game plan and run those plays all week."
After Saturday's workout, Price, his staff and the entire team headed for Spokane to participate in a youth football clinic. Several of the players also visited kids at the Shriner's Hospital, also an annual part of the trip to Spokane.
"It is our way of paying back the Spokane community for all the times they have driven down to see us, especially the youth," Price said.

Saturday, September 4, 1999

Utah at Washington St.

Cougar starters
Offense -- Farwan Zubedi, SE, 5-9, 171, Jr.; Ryan Tujague, LT, 6-7, 305, sr.; Joe Criscione, LG, 6-3, 285, sr.; Lincoln Walden-Schulz, C, 6-4, 285, sr.; Mike Schwarz, RG, 6-3, 295, sr.; Phil Locker, RT, 6-5, 288, fr.; Corey Scott, TE, 6-3, 245, sr.; Leaford Hackett, SB, 5-9, 174, sr.; Steve Birnbaum, QB, 6-5, 224, sr.; Adam Hawkins, RB, 5-11, 205, jr.; Nian Taylor, Fl, 6-1, 195, sr.
Defense -- Austin Matson, SE, 6-3, 262, jr.; Rob Meier, LT, 6-6, 282, sr.; Tomasi Kongaika, RT, 6-0, 282, fr.; Mark Hedeen, WE, 6-6, 270, soph.; Steve Gleason, WLB, 5-11, 215, sr.; Curtis Holden, MLB, 6-2, 232, jr.; Grady Emmerson, SLB, 6-0, 200, sr; LeJuan Gibbons, CB, 5-9, 175, sr.; Earl Riley, SS, 6-2, 218, sr.; Billy Newman, FS, 5-10, 204, soph.; Lamont Thompson, CB, 6-2, 215, jr.
Injury report
Utah -- Andy Kassotis, TE, knee, out; Steve McKane, knee, out.
Washington State -- Alvin Arzu, RB, knee, questionable; Jesse Ratcliff, DE, back strain, questionable; Virgil Williams, CB, nerve bruise, doubtful; Alex Tinsley, RB, hamstring, questionable; Serign Marong, LB, hamstring, doubtful; Reed Raymond, OT, abdominal strain, probable; Joey Hollenbeck, DT, foot, doubtful; Joe Gecas, LB, ankle, out; Adam Davis, WR, hip, out; Curtis Nettles, WR, lower back, out.
Perspectives
Utah -- With four bowl appearances in the last seven years, the Utes have grown apace with the Western Athletic Conference and are now charter members of the Mountain West Conference. These WAC/MWC teams have improved particularly on defense, compared to their outdoor basketball teams of the 1980s. Last year the Utes were two muffed field goals away from a 9-2 record and a bowl berth, and 14 starters return from that team, including strong running back Mike Anderson, mobile quarterback Darnell Arceneaux and disruptive defensive end John Frank. Areas of concern are wide receiver, tight end (with Kassotis injured) and certain aspects of the defense.
Washington State -- The Cougars received good news Friday that offensive lineman Lincoln Walden-Schulz had gained academic clearance to play, despite moments of uncertainty this week. Plenty of questions remain. For one, how will the Cougars recover from probably the harshest spring-to-fall segue in Price's tenure. During that period they lost running back Kevin Brown, receiver Jerry Roquemore, cornerbacks Chris Martin and Anthony Matthews, defensive lineman Eric Boose and six newcomers -- all for noninjury reasons. Five true freshmen will probably play today: running back Deon Burnett, tight end Josh Shavies, linebacker Melvin Simmons, wide receiver Collin Henderson and defensive back Marcus Trufant. The last of these has leapt into a No. 2 cornerback role this week.
Pac-10 schedule
All Times PDT
Today's games
Stanford at Texas, 9 a.m.
Utah at Washington State, 1 p.m.
Oregon State at Nevada, 1 p.m.
Rutgers at California, 2:30 p.m.
Boise State at UCLA, 6 p.m.
USC at Hawaii, 9:30 p.m.
Sunday's games
Arizona at Texas Christian, 4:30 p.m.
Monday's games
Texas Tech at Arizona State, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Mike Venso

Washington State University free safety Lamont Thompson takes a breather during a recent practice

Cougars make adjustments by moving Thompson to CB; Secondary's best player and former free safety appears to finally have a home at corner

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Even without Chris Martin, the Washington State roster has plenty of guys with "DB'' next to their names. But they tend to specialize in action, not reaction. They hit better than they cover. They are safeties, not cornerbacks.
So, with the news that Martin is academically ineligible, the Cougars directed their attention Monday to turning their best backfield athlete, junior Lamont Thompson, into a Pac-10 cornerback.
It's not an ideal situation: Thompson is a such a bonus at free safety. Until injuries slowed him at midseason in 1998, he was on pace to shatter the NCAA career interceptions record, with 10 in his first eight starts.
On the other hand, Thompson isn't unprepared for this change. Knowing depth was a concern at cornerback, the Cougars have been trying their star safety at various positions. And if he looked almost linebackerish at 224 pounds in the spring, he is lighter and faster these days. He will start at corner in the season-opener Saturday against Utah.
Meanwhile, coaches will drill four young cornerbacks, hoping one of them will develop into starting material and allow Thompson to return to his natural position. They are second-year freshman Virgil Williams, sophomore Anthony Matthews, junior-college transfer Mory Banks and true freshman Marcus Trufant.
Matthews boasts fill-in experience from last year, and Trufant is a promising talent. But at the moment, the Cougars' best bet might be Williams, if he recovers from a deep nerve bruise in his right arm, suffered in a collision during WSU's first fall scrimmage Aug. 16. He is listed as doubtful for the home game against Utah.
The other cornerback spot is less problematic. Swift senior LeJuan Gibbons has improved substantially since 1997, when his sophomore mistakes received such widespread scrutiny in the Cougars' Rose Bowl march. Last year his backup play behind Martin and Dee Moronkola was a key to the Cougars' defensive flexibility.
Barring more injuries, the Cougars are still rather flexible, thanks to the plethora of safeties. Hard-hitting Earl Riley returns as a senior after a solid '98 showing at strong safety, and he's an effective rover in five-DB packages.
His backup, improved and vocal senior Torry Hollimon, will be moved confidently to free safety, and will be spelled by a tough, bright sophomore, Billy Newman.
It's still a good secondary. But its visions of greatness have been docked a notch or two.
SPECIAL TEAMS -- Few worries here. Kareem Anderson, the most athletic of punters, returns after a good and sometimes sensational 1998 season. Rian Lindell, the physically strongest of place-kickers, went 25-for-25 in PATs last year and hit seven straight field goals before lapsing into a late-season slump. Both are seniors.

Saturday, September 4, 1999

Cougs' once somber tone more upbeat; With Price's midweek uncertainty evolving into offensive praise, WSU strides confidently into season debut

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- As recently as Tuesday, Mike Price was disclaiming any inkling of how his offense would perform today in Washington State's season-opener against Utah.
Generally, when Mr. Look for the Positive shrugs his shoulders, it's not a good sign.
By Thursday, though, Price was ... well, looking for the positive.
"I feel better, especially after looking at the tape of yesterday's practice,'' he said. "The offense seems to be improving every day, just a little bit.
"Two weeks ago, my Lord, I didn't know if we could get a first down. But ... our execution is better, and (Steve) Birnbaum is throwing the hell out of the ball, just confidently, crisply, and his passes are right on target. The receivers are catching the ball. The line seems to get getting some continuity.''
So now that the Cougars have turned into the Denver Broncos, they can open their season with confidence at 1 p.m. today at Martin Stadium, against a Utah team that returns eight offensive starters and has been placed ahead of WSU in many preseason rankings.
Birnbaum does, for the record, seem to be profiting from the sudden decisiveness of Price's quarterback plans. In last year's rotation with Paul Mencke, Birny rarely shifted out of first gear. He has looked sharper since the coach named him the starter last week. Price suggests that, in comparison with 1998, the senior quarterback has a firmer base, both physically and emotionally.
"He's done it all on his own,'' the coach said. "It's not like I've given him this huge build-up of confidence in the offseason, by not naming him the starting quarterback. He's done it himself, which is probably good. It's almost like he cared too much last year.''
This is not to imply that Birnbaum is a tenured, immovable professor. The exuberant freshman, Jason Gesser, is waiting in line, and Price would like to slip him into the game in the second quarter. Mencke, demoted to No. 3, is hardly despondent. He is tinkering with a wide-receiver role that, Price hints, offers some intriguing options.
"He's probably one of the most team-oriented, high-character guys on the team,'' Price said.
"I guess he could have walked,'' somebody said, meaning he could have transferred.
"If not walked, he could have squawked,'' said Price. "We've had a lot of guys that squawked. I mean, he's still -- I don't want to say that he's still in the quarterback picture. But he's still a quarterback for the Cougs.''
Nobody in the WSU camp is uttering "rotation,'' or any other word too intimately associated with last year's 0-8 Pac-10 record -- except in regard to the running backs.
Four of those will presumably rotate in the opener, by situation. The junior Adam Hawkins will start, and freshman Deon Burnett, sophomore Jeremy Thielbahr and ex-linebacker Brad Philley will play. All are green.
On defense, one wonders how young players like defensive tackle Tomasi Kongaika, who has been on scholarship for all of three weeks, will respond to the noise and nerves of major-college football. The crowd, though, will probably be held to the sub-30,000 range because of Labor Day weekend.
Also, how good a cornerback will Lamont Thompson be? Depth at that position became more of a worry this week when sophomore reserve Anthony Matthews was declared academically ineligible by the NCAA. He is appealing the decision.
Still, the Cougars' uncertainties on defense are relatively few. That's fortunate, because Utah boasts experience at running back with Mike Anderson and at quarterback with Darnell Arceneaux.
In their psychological approach to this season, the Cougars seem to be trying to split the difference between their warranted cockiness of 1997 and their puzzled casualness of 1998.
"We're more hungry (than last year),'' Price said. "We're a little more realistic in our approach to this season. We're probably not going to play for the national championship, although we might, who knows? I don't think right now we're that type of team.
"The type of team we are is: Do everything we can to beat Utah.''

Sunday, September 5, 1999

Steve Hanks

Much of what Mike Price did see from the Cougars he didn't like

Cougs a little too giving; Slew of second-half mistakes ruin WSU's opener, makes Utes' day

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- They tied for the national lead in turnovers last season, and they're back for more.
Saturday's specialty: Make the throw, make the catch, then fumble. It's the advanced stuff, the mark of a maturing team.
Just when you thought the Washington State Cougars had exhausted the possibilities of football generosity, they handed out four fumbles -- three by wide receivers on otherwise fruitful plays -- and lost 27-7 in a dreary season-opener against Utah.
Interceptions being the major problem last year, the Cougars simplified their offense, curbed their quarterbacks' gambling instincts and allowed only one (garbage-time) throw to fall into the wrong hands.
And for what? They still dropped their ninth straight game, burst the swell of optimism that comes with a new season and came close to bungling away one of their most prized possessions: their streak of 167 straight games without a shutout loss. They finally scored with nine minutes left.
"You hate to lose that first game," cornerback LeJuan Gibbons said, "because you've gone through all those two-a-days, all these practices, banging each other up. You've got all these expectations, and then you lose. That's a really crushing blow."
The day was dry and windless. The words "ball security" had been drilled into every Cougar's psyche.
Yet so slippery seemed the football that coach Mike Price unthinkingly said the game had "slipped away." He was wrong and he was right.
In any case, he quickly set the record straight: "Their players outplayed our players."
Jason Gesser, replacing starter Steve Birnbaum, directed the 80-yard touchdown drive early in the fourth quarter to avoid the Cougs' first scoring-column goose egg since 1984 -- and their first at home since 1956. The TD came on a 1-yard plunge by true freshman Deon Burnett.
For once, though, this wasn't about quarterbacks. The freshman Gesser did look sharper than the senior starter, but he was playing in a meaningless segment of the game -- or rather it became meaningless when Jeremy Thielbahr, on Gesser's first collegiate play, rammed off-tackle and lost the ball.
Wes Tufaga recovered for Utah on the WSU 21-yard line, and Mike Anderson, on his way to a 108-yard rushing performance, wrangled to a 9-yard TD that pushed the lead to 20-0 with 2:16 left in the third quarter.
How, you might ask, could this happen? The Cougars don't know. Embarrassed by last year's turnovers, they placed an unusual stress in training camp on keeping track of the football.
The first two fumbles, both by flanker Nian Taylor, erasing gains of about 20 and 10 yards, were judgment calls by the officials, who believed the ball came loose before the receiver hit the ground. He was hit hard on both plays, and Andre Dyson simply grabbed the ball from his grasp on the second occasion. Taylor evidently had no intention to protest the calls, since he failed to appear for interviews.
"He's upset right now," said split end Farwan Zubedi, who was guilty of a fumble himself, "but I just told him you've got to be ready to play next week."
The third fumble came on an odd play in which split end Zubedi juked past Andre Dyson, scampered 20 yards, then received Dyson's payback: The cornerback stripped the ball from behind, and Utah's Jay Hill recovered.
"In the fall we did a lot of ball-security drills," Zubedi said. "You get in the game, and it happens. You don't know what to say. It's not like we weren't working on it. I'm positive it's going to be corrected."
The WSU defense, undaunted by recent attrition in the backfield, made extensive use of five- and six-DB packages, denied Utah a deep passing game and allowed no touchdowns until cornerback Gibbons slipped to the turf and Chris Christensen scored an easy 35-yard pass early in the third period.
Then came fatigue and missed tackles. Utah boasted a 14-minute edge in possession time.
Utah quarterback Darnell Arceneaux was elusive and precise, passing 22-for-36 for 249 yards, hitting Christensen 10 times for 144 yards. The Utes' drives tended to stall near the goal line, but Golden Whetman, who had secured the No. 1 kicking job only days before, boomed first-half field goals of 48 and 45 yards.
Utah played the solid, conservative game the Cougars were trying to play themselves. When the Utes did falter, WSU went to improbable lengths to exonerate them.
Example: Early in the fourth quarter, Whetman drilled a 31-yard field goal, but it was negated by a Utah line penalty. He kicked again and missed from 36. But hard-rushing Lamont Thompson, unable to hit the brakes, dove to the turf and slid into Whetman's legs like a slightly hesitant torpedo.
The roughing-the-kicker penalty then set up Anderson's back-breaking TD.
In their blundering, the 1999 Cougars at least seem to be innovative.
Utah    3     3     14     7--27
Washington St.0 0 0 7-- 7
First Quarter
Utah--FG Whetman 48, 5:39.
Second Quarter
Utah--FG Whetman 45, :08
Third Quarter
Utah--Christensen 35 pass from Arceneaux (Whetman kick), 10:50.
Utah--Anderson 9 run (Whetman kick), 2:16.
Fourth Quarter
Utah--Anderson 40 run (Whetman kick), 14:02.
WSU--Burnett 1 run (Lindell kick), 9:02.
A--26,179.
Uta WSU
First downs 23 17
Rushes-yards 41-175 28-98
Passing 249 225
Comp-Att-Int22-36-2 22-39-1
Return Yards 12 66
Punts-Avg. 5-42 5-43
Fumbles-Lost 1-0 4-4
Penalties-Yards 9-78 9-69
Time of Possession 34:37 25:23
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Utah, Anderson 13-108, Bacon 14-29, Smith 1-15, Morgan 2-14, Arceneaux 9-9, Crockett 2-0. Washington St., Burnett 9-35, Hawkins 7-33, Gesser 5-17, Thielbahr 5-11, Philley 2-2.
PASSING--Utah, Arceneaux 22-36-2-249. Washington St., Birnbaum 12-21-0-150, Gesser 10-18-1-75.
RECEIVING--Utah, Christensen 10-144, Smith 5-56, Russell 3-25, Richins 1-18, Bendinger 1-5, Price 1-4, Bacon 1-minus 3. Washington St., Taylor 5-63, Hackett 4-33, Williams 3-28, Wynn 3-20, Zubedi 2-38, Scott 2-17, Mencke 2-10, Burnett 1-16.

Sunday, September 5, 1999

Steve Hanks

Utah's Andre Dyson pounces on a funmble coughed up by Washington State's Nian Taylor (82) following the receiver's second-quarter catch. WSU's Leaford Hackett argues that Taylor was stripped of the ball after he was down, but his pleas are ignored by linesman Bob Beal as he signals first down for the Utes

QBs obviously struggled, but they weren't entirely to blame

Doug Bauer

PULLMAN -- Judging from the looks of Washington State's offense on Saturday, it might take another 67 years for the Cougars to get back to the Rose Bowl.
WSU's offense was lackluster at its best, pitiful at its worst in the Cougars' 27-7 season-opening loss to Utah at Martin Stadium.
Starting quarterback Steve Birnbaum was ineffective in nearly three quarters of action. He completed 12 of 21 passes for 150 yards, but led the Cougars to just eight first downs.
In comparison, Utah quarterback Darnell Arceneaux and the Utes had 23 first downs in the same time span, and converted nine third-down plays compared to WSU's three.
"Third downs win games," Arceneaux said. "(Utah) coach (Ron) McBride did a good job of setting me up with good play calls, my offensive line gave me all the time I needed and my receivers did a great job of catching the ball.
"When all that happens, it makes my job a lot easier."
The Cougars didn't start driving the ball successfully until redshirt freshman Jason Gesser made his first collegiate appearance. But by that point, all hope was nearly lost for the Cougars, who trailed 13-0. Utah would make it 20-0 after Gesser's first play from scrimmage was fumbled by running back Jeremy Thielbahr, giving the Utes possession at the WSU 21-yard-line.
But once he got the ball back and developed a feel for his surroundings, Gesser padded WSU's first-down count and led the Cougars to their only touchdown of the game. In just over a quarter of playing time, he was 10 of 18 in the air for 75 yards.
In addition, WSU converted four third-down attempts behind Gesser, who guided the Cougars to nine first downs.
"I've got a lot of things to work on," said Gesser, who in his short stint appeared more poised and composed than Birnbaum. "I did some good things and I did some bad things, but I know I can do a lot better.
"It was hard to see the offense struggling last year, and when I went out there I just wanted to make things happen."
While Gesser had a better showing than his WSU teammate, Birnbaum is likely to remain the team's starter for next week's Pacific-10 Conference opener at Stanford.
"We will probably stay with Birnbaum as the starter next week and move Gesser in there," WSU coach Mike Price said. "Both quarterbacks played good, not great, and not close to perfect."
Gesser might not have won Price's favor just yet, but he got a ringing endorsement from someone who's just as familiar with his abilities -- Arceneaux.
"I think they've got to start Jason next week," said Arceneaux, who was a senior quarterback at Honolulu's St. Louis High School when Gesser was his sophomore backup. "He's a competitor, and he'd make it a tough offense to defend.
"I hate to lose, so I do whatever it takes to win, and Jason Gesser is the same way," Arceneaux added. "He definitely should have come in earlier."
To Birnbaum's credit, he was besieged by bad luck. On three occasions, he completed passes for what would have been first downs only to have his receivers fumble away each opportunity.
But at times, Birnbaum seemed hesitant to make plays, and that doesn't bode well for a team starving for an offensive catalyst.
"I was pleased with the way both quarterbacks played at times," Price said. "Obviously neither was spectacular, but they're not the reason for the loss. ... I need to look at the tape and evaluate. By Tuesday I should have an idea of what went wrong and where we are.
"If we played tomorrow, I'd probably start Steve."
And if the Cougars played tomorrow, they'd likely have another loss.
"No matter who everyone says should start, the coach decides who will start," Gesser said. "And that's what I'm out there trying to convince him I can do."

Monday, September 6, 1999

Steve Hanks

Washington State University safety Earl Riley intercepts a pass by Utah quarterback Darnell Arceneaux in the end zone during the third quarter. The Cougars swiped two passes, but had five turnovers themselves in 27-7 loss to the Utes in the team's season openers Saturday at Pullman's Martin Stadium. Are slippery fingers really the only things holding the Cougars back?

Are turnovers just a symptom; Cougar cough-ups may be sign of more deeply rooted problems

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- In Mike Price's heaven, one suspects, there will be no running backs. Surely there will be no turnovers, no compliance cops, no midnight temptations that turn 19-year-old angels into heedless knaves. But possibly no running backs either.
From here to the eternal overtime, the Cougars could break their huddle and spread those bald-eagle wings of theirs -- 10 men toeing the line of scrimmage and a guy named Leaf Bledsoe in the shotgun.
Snap the ball. Clash and scatter. Five big targets spreading like the fingers of God.
The five-receiver set that Price uses at Washington State does look sleek and sexy and futuristic. It has the lightness and glamour of a sports car or a supermodel. It even has a strategic function. It spreads the defense and increases the likelihood of mismatches in pass coverage.
Yet, when you see the Cougars assume this alignment, you can't help but cringe. Maybe even Price braces his shoulders and whispers a prayer. It's like watching the 55-meter hurdles, or a turn-of-the-century attempt at aviation. Bad things tend to happen.
Usually the bad things are blitzes -- the cocksure blitzes of a linebacker who knows, if he can sidle between two distracted linemen, the quarterback is a sitting duck.
That didn't happen Saturday. Utah placed no emphasis on pass-rush. In some ways WSU's five-receiver schemes, used but rarely and with all due discretion, have never looked smoother.
But both of Nian Taylor's fumbles came out of five-receiver sets. He caught the ball and took an emphatic hit. In that ambiguous moment when his knees may or may not have touched ground, a defender stripped the ball loose, Utah recovered and the officials ruled the ball live.
Buoyed by those and two other Cougar fumbles, Utah won 27-7.
The fact that Taylor's fumbles came out of the same alignment may very well have been coincidence. But one wonders if it's an obtuse sign that five-receiver sets for this school are ahead of their time. Or behind it.
In such alignments, there is no threat of run. In past years, the Cougars have often lined up initially with a running back, then put him in motion into a receiver slot. But because of the team's inexperience at running back and other positions, the Cougs drastically reduced their use of motion for this game.
When a linebacker knows the ball will be thrown rather than handed off, it lends a sureness to all his ensuing motions, whether he is rushing the quarterback, covering a receiver or plotting to strip the ball. Isn't this defensive sureness the reason the observer of the spread offense cringes, why bad things tend to happen?
The point here isn't that five-receiver formations were responsible for this or any other loss. The point is that turnovers don't exist in a vacuum. Washington State has committed 45 of them in their last 12 games, and the poor things have been pinned as the undisputed goat of the Cougars' nine-game losing streak.
The club has placed such an emphasis on ball security. The play of quarterbacks Steve Birnbaum and Jason Gesser this time was sporadic but free of the gala, comic blunders of 1998. The playbook had been bowdlerized to leave only the most freshman-friendly of plays.
Yet five more turnovers. They defy all precautions. They don't appear to be the illness itself; they appear to be a symptom. There is a strain, an ache in Price's offense, a yearning perhaps for Drew Bledsoe or Ryan Leaf, an arm that can offset all the Cougar foibles and do justice to a spread attack. Really, those are the only two quarterback in Price's 10-plus seasons at WSU -- maybe throw in Brad Gossen in 1989 -- who have looked comfortable in his offense for any length of time.
Part of this strain Saturday may have been the natural disrhythm of a season-opener, the unavoidable flutter of nerves.
The Cougars' best-case scenario, however, is that they are simply running the gamut of turnovers in chronological sequence. Midway through last season, the blunders occurred at the genesis of the play -- the Cougs would botch the snap from center. Now the turnovers are happening late, late in the play, a microsecond before the whistle.
All sarcasm aside, it's a type of progress.
COUGAR NOTES -- Free safety Billy Newman led the Cougars in tackles with 12 and "played a great game,'' Price said. New linebacker Curtis Holden added 11 tackles in a solid performance. Defensive tackle Rob Meier made three tackles for losses, while Lamont Thompson and Earl Riley had one interception apiece.... Price said he doesn't expect to make any lineup changes for the Cougars' game at 7:15 p.m. Saturday at Stanford, but added that certain unnamed players will be on their "second chance.''

Thursday, September 9, 1999

Can Cardinal extend Cougs' Bay Area jinx?; At least WSU will see Stanford before November

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Every year reporters ask Mike Price, politely of course, why his teams can't win in the Bay Area of California. He can't give an incisive answer, naturally. The reason he lost in '89 isn't the same reason he lost in '98.
All he can do -- and he does it rather well -- is describe the peculiar sense of discomfort he feels on the lulling, peaceful campuses at Stanford and Berkeley, where it seems he is not reviled with the proper fervor.
The Washington State coach will try again at 7:15 p.m. Saturday at Stanford, where the Cougars and Cardinal open their Pac-10 seasons and try to forget their nonleague miseries.
The breezy atmosphere of 85,500-seat Stanford Stadium, Price explained this week, clashes abruptly with WSU's Martin Stadium, "with all the enthusiasm you feel down on that sideline, and the closeness of the fans and players, and how everything is right on top of you.
"When you go to Stanford, they have a track around the field, and the fans are sloped away from you. It's a huge stadium, about two-thirds full, and it's quieter and calmer.''
He prefers even the hostile fans at Eugene and Seattle -- "yelling at you and screaming vulgarities at you and getting you fired up. I like that.''
In any case, Price is 1-8 at the two Bay Area schools, and that includes 0-4 at Stanford.
On the other hand, the Stanford whammy can be charted on a calendar as well as a map. For reasons that are probably as arcane as the Pac-10 scheduling system itself, Washington State hasn't played at Stanford before the month of November since 1984.
That may seem trivial unless you realize that Stanford is notoriously tough in November and WSU notoriously meek in that month.
A spokesman for the Pac-10 said the conference schedule isn't done by computer, but it takes into account myriads of factors. In any case, the WSU-Stanford pairing has emerged from a decade-long rut. "I'm glad we're playing them early,'' Price said.
If Stanford coaches and players have a reputation for starting the season slowly, they did nothing to damage it Saturday in their imponderable 69-17 loss at Austin, Texas.
The statistics from that game aren't as outlandish as you might imagine. For example, Texas managed only one more first down than Stanford.
But the Longhorns repeatedly broke big pass plays, and led by a ridiculous 48-10 at halftime.
Price's metaphor was geographically apt. "I think the wheel just fell off the wagon for Stanford,'' he said. "They played hard but, man, were they tired at the end of the game. The had guys like (safety) Tim Smith, one of the best football players, who were just exhausted out there. ... Texas got a few guys loose in the secondary, and they just out-athleted Stanford.''
The Stanford running game, last in the Pac-10 last year, produced 123 yards -- but only 15 in the pivotal first half.
The game was physically brutal on the Cardinal, leaving star flanker Troy Walters (ankle), quarterback Todd Husak (elbow) and freshman running back Kerry Carter (ankle) with minor injuries.
Price, whose own team was humbled by Utah in its opener, stressed that the Stanford-Texas score was misleading.
"It's not like: 'Oh, boy, we're licking our chops, Did you see what happened to Stanford?'''
Not publicly anyway.
CARDINAL AT A GLANCE -- In terms of experience, Stanford has no excuse for a slow start. Nineteen starters return from a team that won its final two games last year to finish 3-8. Those returners were responsible for all but 26 yards of last year's total. ... Center Mike McLaughlin made his 35th consecutive start at Texas, but left the game with a turned ankle. ... The Cardinal's receiving corps was ranked as high as second in the nation in the preseason. It includes All-America candidate Walters and veteran DeRonnie Pitts, who caught 72 passes last year. ... Husak threw for 3,092 yards last year, though at times his job was being challenged by Joe Borchard and Randy Fasani, who are still around. ... Among the top names on defense are big safety Smith (6-4, 30) and defensive tackle Willie Howard (6-4, 290).

Friday, September 11, 1999

Cougars face low-profile opportunity; Pac-10 opener will serve as dismal beginning for one of league's lightly regarded teams

Dale Grummert

STANFORD, Calif. -- Regardless of what happens in this Pac-10 opener, Washington State and Stanford have miles of boulder-pushing ahead of them. Tonight's outcome at Stanford Stadium will cause scarcely a ripple in the national power rankings. The preseason arbiters agreed that these are two of the three worst teams in the league, and their nonleague openers last week did nothing to refute that notion.
And this is precisely why the game is so important.
"I kind of feel the pressure, or whatever, that we've got to win this," WSU coach Mike Price said. "It's (only) the second game. I mean, lord knows a lot of things can happen to us. But I just kind of feel that. I guess because (last week's loss to Utah) isn't our first loss. It's this team's first loss, but it's not Mike Price's first loss in a row."
It was his ninth loss in a row. Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham has dropped seven of his last nine. Even at patient, underbudgeted Washington State, even at high-minded, bookish Stanford, those are worrisome numbers.
When the Cougars and Cardinal look at each other, they can't help but see a long-deferred meal.
A few years ago, the two head coaches shared little beyond a hidden managerial flair that almost all men in their position possess. Price was the pass-minded, wise-cracking "player's coach" from the far Northwest, Willingham the run-oriented, detail-obsessed disciplinarian from North Carolina, who aside from Stanford has never had an employer west of Minnesota.
But in the past two years Willingham, it seems, has become a Westerner, and one who has drawn from the coaching circle to which Price belongs. In 1998 he handed his offense over to former WSU and Washington assistant Bill Diedrick, whose air-minded handiwork can be seen in Stanford's 320-yard passing average last season, best in the conference. And Buzz Preston, the WSU running-backs coach who left in '98 for Nevada-Las Vegas, wound up on Stanford's staff this year.
Another Stanford assistant, Denny Schuler, grew up with Price at Snohomish County. Yet another, defensive coordinator Kent Baer, worked with the WSU coach in Japan this summer. Meanwhile, Price and Willingham have become friends.
The defense that Baer and Schuler are employing, in contrast to WSU's approach at the moment, places an emphasis on stopping the run.
So the Cougars hope this is the week that quarterback Steve Birnbaum finally comes into his own. Stanford, in a 69-17 humiliation at Texas last week, proved vulnerable to a big-play passing game. That's why it was a particular blow to the Cougars when 6-foot-3 wide receiver Milton Wynn broke a finger in practice this week.
They may turn to another junior-college transfer, 6-5 Marcus Williams, who made a striking one-handed catch against Utah. Stanford will counter with the most prolific receiver in school history, Troy Walters, who has recovered from an ankle injury.
Both teams are tempted to throw true-freshman running backs to the wolves. Washington State's Deon Burnett will again come off the bench early in the game, advised to curtail his high-school stutter-stepping. "We'll definitely try to run, because we need to keep the defense off the field," said Price, alluding to Utah's huge advantage in possession time last week.
And Stanford appears to have a plum in running back Kerry Carter, a Canadian who perhaps was overlooked by some recruiters because his senior season in high school last year was canceled because of a teachers' strike.
Doesn't that sound like a Cougar bio?

Monday, September 13, 1999

Stanford's Dave Davis scoots into the end zone for a second-quarter touchdown in front of two sprawled-out Washington State pursuers

Cougars unravel; Seemingly endless string of mistakes pushes WSU to 10th consecutive defeat

Dale Grummert

STANFORD, Calif. -- All week long the Cougars beseeched themselves to stop fumbling. And for one whole kickoff and one whole play from scrimmage, by Jove, they didn't fumble. And then they did. And then they fell apart.
A punt-block, a safety, a slew of penalties, one of those larger-than-life interceptions that proved the legacy of last year's team -- Washington State squeezed most of these missteps into a miserable first half Saturday night while losing 54-17 to Stanford.
Oh, if fumbles were the Cougars' only shortcoming. Facing a team that had lost by 52 points at Texas the previous week, the Cougars boggled the imagination: Just how dark is their labyrinth? How bleak their prospects?
In a Pac-10 opener that had seemed eminently winnable, the Cougars actually outgained Stanford 366-318 but doled out four critical turnovers, piled up 118 yards in penalties, drew seven quarterback sacks and suffered their 10th straight loss over two seasons.
Washington State coach Mike Price suggested his players will sense his ire.
"I don't want these guys to get used to losing, and feel like that's just part of the game," he said. "It's unacceptable, and it's not going to be nice around (the WSU camp) until we win.
"It's not a lack of effort," he said. "We're doing some things, but we're not playing good, smart football. We're making dumb mistakes and putting ourselves in bad field position."
Stanford, which had lost seven of its previous nine games, got heroic performances from outside linebacker Riall Johnson, who collected five sacks and a safety, and quarterback Todd Husak, who completed 17 of 24 passes for 215 yards and three touchdowns. Troy Walters, long a nemesis of WSU, caught 10 passes for 118 yards.
"We just can't get it together," WSU cornerback LeJuan Gibbons said. "The hardest part of these two losses is that the players who are supposed to be stepping up -- the seniors -- are not making plays. We're making way too many mistakes and not playing like leaders."
One exception is slotback Leaford Hackett, who caught 10 passes for 103 yards.
But Nian Taylor dropped a long pass in the end zone, Kareem Anderson fumbled a punt-snap, WSU's experienced secondary gave up several big plays, and Steve Birnbaum threw two interceptions and watched most of the second half from the sideline as the Cougs' quarterback picture grew even muddier.
Birnbaum's understudy, Jason Gesser, threw no interceptions but lost a fumble and was sacked for a safety while he tried to dig the Cougs out of a huge second-half hole.
"He gives us a spark and I thought we needed that," Price said. "He runs around and makes things happen. Some are good and some are bad. But he's a fighter and a competitor and he gives effort. Not that Steve Birnbaum didn't. Steve, I thought, played very well at times."
The Cougars' first possession was uncanny. After losing four fumbles in a loss to Utah last week, they had turned ball security into a team religion. Then on the second play from scrimmage, Willie Howard stripped the ball from Adam Hawkins, and Stanford's Riall Johnson recovered.
Duly chastened, the Cougars put their bungling on hold until late in the first quarter, when cornerback Ruben Carter brilliantly timed an interception of a Birnbaum heave and sailed to an 67-yard touchdown to make it 17-7.
Washington State's third major mistake of the first half came in punt protection from its own 13-yard line. Emory Brock handily blocked Anderson's kick, and the ball conveniently settled in the left corner of the end zone. Brock recovered for the TD, creating the rather ludicrous halftime score of 38-10.
"Like my coach always says, you've got to find a way to stop the bleeding," Hackett said. "Right now we're bleeding, and we're not finding a way to stop it."
The Cougars had added to their problems with 75 yards' worth of clipping, dead-ball misdeeds and other infractions in the first half.
Some of the first-half deluge was pure Stanford prowess, if you can imagine that. Husak made a perfect 44-yard scoring pass to Walters and a sweetly timed 12-yarder to Dave Davis. Minutes after WSU's Rian Lindell had missed a 52-yard field goal, Stanford's Mike Biselli connected from the same length.
In one of the WSU's few first-game highlights, Hackett found the entire right half of the end zone at his disposal, enough in which to reel in a Birnbaum overthrow for an 11-yard TD. That briefly, very briefly, made it a close game at 10-7.

Washington St 7 3 7 0--17
Stanford 17 21 14 2--54
First Quarter
Sta--Husak 5 run (Biselli kick), 11:35
Sta--FG Biselli 52, 6:58
WSU--Hackett 4 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 2:41
Sta--R. Carter 67 interception return (Biselli kick), 0:26
Second Quarter
Sta--Walters 44 pass from Husak (Biselli kick), 14:42
WSU--FG Lindell 27, 6:42
Sta--Davis 12 pass from Husak (Biselli kick), 2:27
Sta--Brock recovers blocked punt in end zone (Biselli kick), 1:32
Third Quarter
WSU--Scott 5 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 11:02
Sta--K. Carter 9 run (Biselli kick), 5:01
Sta--Pitts 18 pass from Husak (Biselli kick), 2:48
Fourth Quarter
Sta--Safety, R. Johnson sacked QB Gesser in end zone, 11:28
A--36,592.
WSU Stan
First downs aa23 a a 13
Rushes-yards a38-65 a36-103
Passing a a301 a a 215
Comp-Att-Int 26-44-2 17-27-1
Return Yards a a49 a a 83X
Punts-Avg. a 6-28.3 a 7-36.0
Fumbles-Lost a 4-2 a 0-0
Penalties-Yards a9-118 a 7-65
Time of Possession a 30:45 a 29:15
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Washington St, Burnett 11-52, Thielbahr 4-15, Birnbaum 4-8, Gesser 13-1, Hawkins 5-(minus-1), Anderson 1-(minus-10). Stanford, Carter 10-37, Gayles 5-20, Borchard 1-12, Wire 6-12, Allen 5-7, Husak 3-7, Lacey 3-7, Moore 2-3 Fasani 1-(minus-2).
PASSING--Washington St, Birnbaum 14-20-1-144, Gesser 11-23-1-120, Mencke 1-1-0-37. Stanford, Husak 17-24-1-215, Borchard 0-1-0-0, Fasani 0-2-0-0.
RECEIVING--Washington St, Hackett 10-103, Taylor 5-79, Zubedi 4-79, Henderson 2-13, Scott 2-7, Hawkins 1-17, Williams 1-7, Burnett 1-(minus-4). Stanford, Walters 10-118, Pitts 4-63, Stewart 2-23, Davis 1-12 .

Monday, September 13, 1999

Stanford 54, WSU 17
Quick fact

While being routed, the Cougars managed to record 10 more first downs than their opponents.
Key plays
lOn the game's second play from scrimmage, Willie Howard strips Adam Hawkins of the ball, and Stanford's Riall Johnson recovers on the WSU 32-yard line, setting up a touchdown.
Ruben Carter steps in front of WSU receiver Marcus Williams to intercept a Steve Birnbaum pass and finds nothing but open space in front of him. He sprints 67 yards to a touchdown that gives the Cardinal a 17-7 lead.
Stanford proves that it can generate its own good fortune when Todd Husak hits a streaking Troy Walters for a beautiful 44-yard touchdown that makes it 24-7 early in the second quarter.
WSU's next game
Washington State and Idaho play at 1 p.m. Saturday at Martin Stadium.

Monday, September 13, 1999

Stanford flanker Troy Walters tries to get away from a couple of Washington State defenders, including linebacker Steve Gleason, during the first quarter. Stanford remained out of WSU's reach Saturday nght with a 54-17 win

Megabytes leave mark on Cougars; Crunching numbers data doesn't look good for WSU

Dale Grummert

STANFORD, Calif. -- We all have our grievances with this place. Mike Price doesn't like the diffuse, underexcited atmosphere of Stanford Stadium, which he associates with his miserable win-loss record here. I dislike the nonplural nickname, Cardinal, which I associate with awkward sentence constructions.
In essence, it's the same grievance: The impersonality of the place crimps our style.
Price is hard-pressed to lodge a protest, but for my part I plan to rechristen this Stanford team the Megabytes, in honor of the eerie, ever-expanding influence of nearby Silicon Valley, and the cyber-efficiency with which this school routinely wallops Washington State.
It probably rankles the Megabytes to no end that Price can't seem to differentiate between them and the University of California, the team up the road, the object of Stanford's monomania. The Megabytes' ticket hot line is 1-800-BEAT-CAL, and this number is plastered all over the stadium. If you're not a Cal Bear, you're automatically in danger of being lulled or snubbed or whatever it is that happens to the Cougars whenever they step foot here. Or in Berkeley.
The Cougars' losing streak began almost a year ago at Cal, and it reached double figures Saturday night in a fog-enshrouded 54-17 disaster at Stanford. That left Price with a 1-8 record in road games against his Cal/Stanford menace.
In truth, however, these two Bay Area schools, or at least their surrounding towns, are vastly different. Berkeley lionizes the free spirit, Palo Alto the free market. One is shabby, the other genteel.
The area surrounding Stanford Stadium seems to look toward Pasadena, with its palm trees rising and drooping like a Whoopi Goldberg 'do. Downtown Palo Alto is pleasant and dull and well-scrubbed, though it's haunted by a legendary Berkeleyish eccentric who, when he forgets to take his medication, stomps about and raves about the persecution of the Armenians.
In San Francisco's North Beach (to shift the point of analogy a moment), the streets are named after the maligned poets of the beat movement. None of that here. In the main square of Palo Alto, the streets are named after only the most canonical of writers: Emerson, Lord Byron, Kipling, Cowper, some 20 others. Byron, you imagine, would move his street to the North Beach if he could.
Fan indifference. There is nothing like it for tripping up a Price team. Presuppose your superiority. Saunter into the stadium a minute before kickoff. Wear a touch of "cardinal'' but don't overdo it. When you take a 38-10 halftime lead, leave.
In their first two games, the Cougars have been so decisively inept at the basics -- blocking, catching, obeying the rules of football -- that it's difficult to gauge their talent. Despite the evidence of game scores, they are presumably not 89 points worse than the University of Texas, which had whipped the Megabytes the previous week. But the reason for Saturday's misleading score -- WSU's crisis of confidence during a catastrophic second quarter -- is just as problematic as a lack of talent.
The unsound fundamentals are especially puzzling since Price is generally such a fast-starter-- is able to cover so many bases in preseason camp. This is only the second time WSU has been 0-2 since 1981. Meanwhile, Price isn't close to solving this Stanford quandary. In five games here, his teams have been outscored 196-78.
Before the latest and worst of these routs, Butch the Cougar, Washington State's Disneyesque costumed mascot, found himself venturing through enemy territory: the Stanford VIP parking lot at tailgating hour. Two enchanted young boys put down their football and, torn between being children and being good aloof Stanford fans, frolicked rather tentatively in the creature's wake.
"That's the Washington State mascot,'' said a 60s-ish Stanford fan wearing a white shirt and tie. "Hunting season has opened.''
COUGAR NOTES -- Don't blame Steve Birnbaum for for the second-quarter interception that resulted in a 67-yard Stanford touchdown. New receiver Marcus Williams ran the wrong route.... Although freshman Jason Gesser played most of the second half, Price implied that Birnbaum is still the Cougars' starter. "Jason's not ready to be our starting quarterback yet,'' he said. "He's making too many mistakes right now."... Price said lineup changes are possible in the offensive line, depending on various players' health.... Curtis Holden led the defense with 15 tackles, and Steve Gleason had 12. Both had two tackles for losses.

Wednesday, September 15, 1999

Vandals established as favorite; Oddsmakers ignore series history, like Idaho by three in 82nd edition

Bert Sahlberg

For one of the rare times in the football series between Washington State and Idaho, the Vandals are not only the home team, but the favorite.
The two collide for the 82nd time Saturday at Washington State University's Martin Stadium. Kickoff is at 1:07 p.m.
Although WSU leads the all-time series 63-15-3 and has won the last 14 meetings, the Vandals have been installed as a three-point favorite by oddsmakers in Nevada.
Idaho, which hasn't defeated WSU since 1965, enters the game at 1-1 after beating Eastern Washington and losing to Auburn. Washington State is 0-2, losing to Utah and Stanford.
WSU has actually lost 10 straight games dating back to last year's Idaho game when WSU prevailed 24-16. WSU actually led 24-0 before Idaho rallied in the second half.
The 10 straight losses by WSU is the third longest active losing streak in NCAA Division I-A football. Only Kent (15) and South Carolina (12) have lost more.
TICKETS FOR SALE -- Plenty of tickets remain for Saturday's contest as officials hope to at least equal last year's attendance of 36,770.
There's reason for the optimism as the weather forecast for Saturday on the Palouse calls for sunshine and temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s. That's a far contrast from a year ago when the game was played in the rain and cool weather.
Tickets are $18 for reserved, $10 for general admission adult and UI students, $5 general admission for youth and senior citizens and $25 for the family plan, which includes either two adults and two children or one adult and three children.
Idaho received only 2,500 free tickets for students, leaving most having to pay.
If the game is not sold out prior to Saturday, general admission tickets will be sold at the game.
Officials are expected to announce today roughly how many tickets remain.
HOME SWEET HOME -- Although the game is being played at WSU, Idaho will be considered the home team and will wear its black and gold uniforms while WSU will be in white.
The Cougars, however, will dress in their usual home locker room and keep their home bench on the playing field.
Idaho has moved its home games to Martin Stadium for at least the next two seasons to help meet Division I-A attendance requirements. Idaho must average 17,500 fans per its four home games this season. The Kibbie Dome, where UI played its home games on the UI campus, only seats a little more than 16,000.
To help UI meet the attendance requirement, WSU is allowing UI to play its home games at Martin Stadium and also agreed to let UI be the home team this year. UI's other home games are against North Texas, Utah State and rival Boise State.
Idaho officials are hoping for a sellout crowd of around 37,600, which would leave it more than halfway to its attendance goal.
BIG BET -- As is the case with all rivalry games anymore, the Idaho-WSU game has an unusual bet.
Usually it's the mayors, politicians or school presidents making the wager, but this time its two former athletes who have strong ties to area.
Former UI quarterback Ken Hobart and ex-WSU lineman Jamie White have made a wager on the game. The two played against each other in the 1982 meeting at Spokane's Joe Albi Stadium.
If Idaho wins, White will present Hobart with two large tins of Cougar Gold Cheese, a product of the WSU Agriculture School. If WSU wins, Hobart will give White two cases of Pepsi Cola that feature the 1999 Vandal football schedule imprinted on the cans.
Hobart is a 1979 graduate of Kamiah High and now sells billboard advertising in north-central Idaho and eastern Washington for Lamar Companies at Lewiston.
White is a 1980 graduate of Lapwai High School and is the assistant athletic director for marketing at Lewis-Clark State College.
TV -- While the game will not be shown live in the Quad Cities area, Boise-area fans will get to see the game on TV.
The contest is one of four UI games that will be televised this season by KIVI as UI graduates Dave Tester and Joe Hughes will call the action.
Fox Sports Northwest will replay the game on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. with Bud Nameck and Clete Casper doing the broadcast.

Thursday, September 16, 1999

Rivlary grows on Cougars; Burden of losing streak, underdog status gives WSU reason to view UI differently

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- In two years, Washington State has gone from being the best team on the West Coast to being, possibly, the second-best team on the Palouse.
Idaho's status as three-point favorite in the Battle of the Palouse on Saturday is a bitter pill for a team that has long regarded the Vandals as a pesky younger brother.
"The ramifications of this game are huge, all of a sudden,'' WSU coach Mike Price said. "I'm putting pressure on myself, on the coaches, on the players, to respond.
"Someone said the pressure is on Washington State. ... So be it. ... (They said) Idaho doesn't have anything to lose. Well, we do. ... They are a competitive, worthy opponent. This isn't coachspeak. This is the facts.''
For the past two weeks, the Cougars have been staging longer-than-usual workouts in an effort to solve the varied problems that have cropped up in losses of 27-7 to Utah and 54-17 to Stanford.
In addition to the Cougars' most obvious problem -- their nine turnovers -- they are trying to correct blocking errors by the offensive linemen and to heat up their pass rush. Stanford's Todd Husak went unsacked and largely unharassed while passing 17-for-23 last week.
Price was oddly explicit about the Cougars' defensive intentions against Idaho quarterback Ed Dean, who replaced the injured John Welsh in the Vandals' 30-23 loss last week at Auburn. Either the Cougars plan to rush hard or they want Dean to think they will.
"If it can't be the front four (rushing) it will be five or six or seven guys,'' Price said. "He'd better strap it up because we're going to come after him. Auburn sat back and let him throw underneath, and he picked them apart. I mean, picked them apart. We can't give him more than a second to throw. We're emptying the kitchen sink at him.''
In off-the-field matters, Washington State and Idaho are still speaking in terms of a partnership. This will be the Vandals' first "home" game in their adopted stadium on the WSU campus, as they launch their one-season acid test to meet NCAA Division I-A attendance requirements.
"When we renewed this series (last year),'' WSU athletic director Rick Dickson said, "it was with the intention that anything and everything we could do to assist the University of Idaho in their quest to be Division I-A, we would do. The continuation of this series is really based on that.''
Said Idaho athletic director Mike Bohn, "We want to create an atmosphere that's something special, early in the year. ... I'd like to carry on the excitement of this game to permeate all our (home) games.''
Meanwhile, Washington State players try to figure out what has befallen them during their 10-game losing streak since their 24-16 win over Idaho in the 1998 Battle of the Palouse. The Cougars' last two losses have been particularly hard to stomach.
"It's not a lack of preparation,'' cornerback LeJuan Gibbons said. "Most of the guys stayed here (over the summer). We busted our butts in the spring. We broke so many (physical-test) records this summer. We're in shape. We study. We meet at each other's houses (to study the playbook). We do everything.
"But when the time comes to play, we are not stepping up to play.''
COUGAR NOTES -- Wide receiver Nian Taylor traveled to his home in the Los Angeles area Sunday to attend a friend's funeral, but was back for the Cougars' first practice of the week Tuesday. ... Price said true freshman running back Deon Burnett "is getting closer to that starting call.'' Adam Hawkins has started the first two games.

Saturday, September 18, 1999

Who's gonna win?; Depends whom you ask

Tribune staff report

It's a hard game to figure, this Battle of the Palouse football game between Washington State and Idaho.
Heck, it's going to be hard to just watch WSU playing on its home field, yet be the away team and wearing their white uniforms.
That, and probably more strange twists await today when the Vandals and Cougars hook up again at WSU's Martin Stadium. Kickoff is at 1:07 p.m.
Washington State leads the all-time series 63-15-1 and has won the last 14 meetings, including 24-16 last year.
While Idaho hasn't won since 1965, the Vandals have been installed as a 3-point favorite, thanks mainly to a 10-game losing streak by WSU dating back to last year's contest.
So who is going to win today's game? Here are some predictions from people who live in the Quad Cities area.
Mark Williams, owner of At Bat Card Shop in Lewiston: Idaho 27, WSU 24. "Brad Rice is going have an interception return for a touchdown with about two minutes left in the game because he plays on my slowpitch softball team.''
Ed Cheff, Lewis-Clark State College baseball coach: Idaho 24, WSU 21. "It's a big game for Idaho and a chance to establish itself as a legitimate Division I team. And I think right now, personnel-wise, they are comparable with Washington State. They have the same amount of scholarships for the first time in a long time. I think Idaho has a little more incentive.''
Norm Klug, Clarkston High School athletic director: Idaho 27, WSU 24. "The reason I say that is I think WSU is struggling a little bit. Idaho is coming off a good performance against a normally strong football power in Auburn. If the time is right -- Idaho is coming off a great year last year and a good game against a bigger opponent -- it is now.''
Emmett Dougherty, Lewiston High School football coach: Washington State. "I'm a former (Montana) Grizzly so I could never cheer for Idaho.''
Barb Wachter, owner of Hilltop Restaurant in Pullman: WSU 17, Idaho 16. "I think it will be that way because of the quarterbacks.''
Jamie White, Lewis-Clark State assistant athletic director for marketing and former WSU football player: WSU 23, Idaho 21. "I'm a Cougar. That's an easy one. I'm picking them based strictly on loyalty and tradition.''
Ken Hobart, employee of Lamar Outdoor Advertising in Lewiston and former UI football player: Idaho 38, WSU 21. "If Idaho is going to beat them, this is the year. And I think Idaho, offensively, we're notorious for scoring lots of points. Why 21 for WSU? Well, the way Idaho's kicking game has been going WSU's bound to have some good field position.''
Greg Fitzgerald, interim sports director at KLEW: Idaho 24, WSU 21. "I think Wazzu does have a great team, but they really haven't shown their potential. They could come out and surprise everybody. I think the Vandals have one of their strongest teams ever. I think they want to beat a Pac-10 team and show they are ready for Division I football. At the same time, I don't think it's going to be an easy game for either team.''
Jim Bershaw, owner of Gibbs Lock Service in Lewiston and District II high school football commissioner: Idaho 31, WSU 21. "This is the best chance Idaho has at beating WSU since 1966. And I was at that game too.''
Ryan Skinner, former UI linebacker now playing for the Puget Sound Jets, a semipro football team in Seattle: Idaho 38, WSU 14. "I'm thinking the Vandals are going to break loose offensively, maybe even put up a season high. And I've got to say the defense is going to step up too. I don't see those guys giving up more than a couple touchdowns."
Nick Menegas, former Lewiston High football coach: Idaho 27, WSU 20. "I think it will be a close game. I think the kicking game will be the deciding factor. Of course I have to stay loyal to Idaho since four of my Bengals are playing there.''

Saturday, September 18, 1999

Better on tap?; Traditionally lopsided rivalry may be due for shift toward Vandals

Bert Sahlberg

PULLMAN -- They've made it through all the hype and strangeness of the week. Now it's just a matter of who will make it through today.
The 82nd college football rendition of the Battle of the Palouse between Washington State and Idaho appears like it might actually be a battle when they collide at 1:07 p.m. at WSU's Martin Stadium.
The Cougars have dominated the series, 63-15-3 and have won the last 14 meetings dating back to 1965. Yet it's the Vandals who are the three-point favorites.
Add to that a possible sellout crowd and temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s, and it should be a beautiful afternoon.
But for whom?
For the Cougars, beauty lies in a win. WSU has lost 10 straight since a 24-16 victory over UI last year.
At times this season the Cougars have looked downright awful. WSU fans are hoping UI coach Chris Tormey is right: The Cougars really aren't that bad, they've just had some bad breaks.
In fact, Tormey goes against the thought UI is catching WSU at a good time.
"I don't think that's necessarily true,'' he said. "I think they are going to come out and play their best football. I was rooting for them to beat Stanford over the weekend, but it didn't happen. I think they will be hungry for a win. It's been a long time since they have won.''
Tormey even went so far as to say WSU could have easily have won both its games if it weren't for a few critical mistakes and turnovers. WSU has lost to Utah 27-7 and Stanford 54-17, even though it did outgain the latter in total offense.
A win today would help the Cougars save some face, and possibly the season. An 0-3 start would probably leave WSU favored in only one game the rest of the season -- against Southwestern Louisiana.
For Idaho, today has bigger implications. The Vandals have spent the last four seasons trying to prove they are a legitimate Division I-A team. Despite winning the Big West Conference -- considered the weakest I-A league -- a year ago and playing WAC, SEC and Pac-10 teams fairly close the past three years, Idaho hast won only one of those games under Tormey.
"We haven't had a big breakthrough game,'' Tormey said. "You could say we had a breakthrough game against a Conference USA team when we beat Southern Miss in the Humanitarian Bowl, but we've never beaten a Pac-10 team, SEC team or a Big 12 team. Until we can actually get that done, we are not there yet.''
It also would help gain some inroads on WSU in recruiting. Idaho's roster is full of Pac-10 rejects who feel they have something to prove.
"This is a giant game for the Vandals,'' Tormey said. "In my five appearances in the game -- four as a player and one as a coach -- I haven't won. I would like to come out on the winning side and I'm sure all of these players would too.''
To win the game, both teams need to get their offenses untracked early since both defenses will try to take away the run first and then put heavy pressure on the quarterback.
"The system they have defensively is really set to stop the run, so you need to loosen it up with the pass,'' WSU coach Mike Price said. "If our passing game is not effective, then the running game isn't going to be.
"If they have eight guys at the line of scrimmage and are playing bump-and-run against our receivers and we can't complete the ball, then we shouldn't be running this offense. We should be running a wing-T and we should be running misdirection and all that kind of stuff.''
WSU did just fine against UI's pressure defense a year ago as wide receiver Nian Taylor ate up the Vandal cornerbacks. Taylor had eight catches for 254 yards and two touchdowns.
"Nian Taylor,'' UI linebacker Chris Nofoaiga said about what he remembered from last year's game. "He just had a big day.''
In comparison to last year, the Vandals feel they're better not only in the secondary, but defensively as whole.
"I think our defense is playing tough right now,'' UI defensive tackle Mao Tosi said. "But we have to work on our pass rush game. Our defensive line isn't getting to the quarterback quick enough and our defensive backs have to stick with their guys longer.''
To bolster the running game, Price has named freshman Deon Bennett as the starter. Bennett, at 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, is averaging 4.3 yards per carry.
"The structure of their defense is difficult to play against,'' Price said. "But their defense isn't overpowering. It's not like they're going to kick the living crap out of you every down. But they're going to be there ever down and run to the ball every down.''
Price has made his defensive game plan known as the Cougars also will bring plenty of pressure, especially since UI has a new starting quarterback in Ed Dean. Dean has played well in a reserve role the past two weeks, and took over as starter when John Welsh went down with a season-ending ankle injury.
"Actually Ed is probably a little more mobile in the pocket than Welsh was,'' Price said. "If you saw the Utah game, that's not one of our strengths. We need to make sure we contain. But we're going to come after him. We're going to blitz. We don't think the way to beat Idaho is to sit back and play zone and let him pick you apart.''
Plenty of tickets are still available for today's game, which will be televised live only in the Boise area.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

Washington State running back Deon Burnett finds little running room as he is stacked up by Idaho's Chris Nofoaiga and J.J. Johnston while Mao Tosi moves in to finish off the play

Welcome home; UI retakes Palouse after 34 years of WSU control, makes itself comfortable at Martin Stadium as well

Bert Sahlberg

PULLMAN -- Welcome home Idaho. Just make sure you wipe your feet first.
That Crimson and Gray doormat will work just fine. Just remember a man's home is his castle.
Or, in your case, the Palouse is now your kingdome.
The Vandals became rulers of the Palouse for a year after they scored all of their points in the second half to defeat Washington State 28-17 before a Martin Stadium crowd of 34,873 on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
UI's win ended a 14-game losing streak to the Cougars dating back to 1965 and was only the Vandals' 16th win in 82 meetings between the two.
While it wasn't unexpected -- Idaho was a three-point favorite -- the result was still rather shocking, especially since WSU scored on its first two possessions for a 14-0 lead midway through the first quarter.
Yet despite being down to their third-string quarterback by the end of the second quarter and seemingly facing an impossible task, Idaho more than answered the challenge.
In turn, the Vandals, considered the home team Saturday, picked up one of the biggest wins in the 100-plus year history of the program.
"I think you can definitely put it in the milestone category," UI coach Chris Tormey said after the Vandals improved to 2-1 overall. "We needed a breakthrough win. We needed to beat a Pac-10 team and we were able to get that done today. We want to make this a rivalry, and I think it is now."
This was also supposed to be a breakthough game for the Cougars, and for the first quarter it was. But then WSU, 0-3, reverted back to its self- decapitating ways. The result was its 11th straight loss, currently the third longest in Division I-A, and much embarrassment.
"This is the worst of worst times for Cougar football right now," WSU coach Mike Price said. "It's not going to go away. Right in our own stadium.
"It was not a fluke. They beat us fair and square. They just outcoached us and outplayed us and won the game. We're just going to have to face up to it and start facing up to it right away. I just hope the fans stick with us a couple more weeks."
Well ...
WSU certainly gave its fans something to stick with early, manhandling Idaho with drives of 80 and 72 yards for touchdowns. It appeared the gray cloud that had been hovering over WSU had finally been lifted. After all, it was a beautiful afternoon with temperatures at kickoff near 80 degrees.
After the opening kickoff, WSU took advantage of UI's soft coverage in the secondary. The Vandals used five and sometimes six defensive backs, but their cornerbacks lined up nearly 10 yards away from the receivers, giving them plenty of room.
In turn, WSU had little problem with throwing short passes and moving the ball downfield. Through the first two series, quarterback Steve Birnbaum was 7 for 10 for 121 yards and WSU had a 14-0 lead.
"We were expecting a lot of crossing routes but they didn't run them and they were just killing us in zone," Tormey said.
Birnbaum put WSU on the board with a nice 19-yard touch pass to wide receiver Marcus Williams. Although UI cornerback Cleavon Bradshaw was tight with the coverage, he never saw the pass, which was thrown just a tad behind Williams, who stopped to make the catch in the end zone while Bradshaw kept running.
While Birnbaum's passing keyed WSU's second drive, freshman running back Deon Burnett looked sharp as he easily scored on a 13-yard run.
So while WSU was rolling, Idaho was reeling. While the Vandals did move the ball in the first half they had nothing to show for it. They missed field goal attempts of 45 and 48 yards, punted twice, failed on a fake punt and threw an interception.
To top it off, quarterback Ed Dean, who was making his first start of the season after a season-ending ankle injury to John Welsh last week, suffered a sprained left ankle late in the second quarter and was replaced by senior Greg Robertson, who started five games last season but had fallen to third team by the end of spring practice.
It appeared Idaho has blown its chance to get back into the game despite playing WSU even the rest of the first half. Idaho trailed 14-0 and while it could have easily been closer, it also could have been worse.
It certainly appeared it was headed that way in the third quarter when the Cougars seemed ready to go for the jugular on their first drive.
But then little by little, play by play, it all unraveled for WSU. First wide receiver Nian Taylor, who had a career day against UI last year in a 24-16 win, dropped a touchdown pass. Then Birnbaum overthrew a receiver for a sure touchdown.
Left with a third-and-12 at the UI 23 later in the drive, Birnbaum again dropped back to pass, but was planted into the turf by UI defensive tackle Mao Tosi. While Birnbaum suffered slight whiplash and a bruised left hip, that wasn't the worst news.
He also fumbled.
Junior outside linebacker Chris Nofoaiga, one of the fastest players on UI's team, picked up the loose ball and returned it 62 yards for a touchdown with 8:59 left in the quarter. Instead of 21-0, it was now 14-7.
"I don't think there's any question that Mao Tosi's hit and Chris Nofoaiga's touchdown got us on the board and got momentum going our way," Tormey said. "I think it just sets the table for us. It says that we're right in this thing and we can do this. We just needed that spark, that big play, and that's what Mao Tosi and Chris Nofoaiga did."
The rest of the game was all Idaho as the offense finally got untracked while Tosi became a 12th member of WSU's offense, firmly entrenching himself in the Cougar backfield. The 6-foot-6, 289-pound senior finished with two quarterback sacks, three pass deflections, a forced fumble and five tackles.
Feeding off his play, UI's defense allowed only four first downs on WSU's next four drives. Twice the Cougars went three and out, including the drive after UI's first touchdown, thanks in part to a quarterback sack by Tosi.
It then took UI's offense just one play to tie the score. Robinson threw deep, and although WSU defender Lamont Thompson was in stride with UI receiver Rossi Martin, it was Martin who went high up for the ball, made the catch and got past a falling Thompson to score a 51-yard touchdown.
After going scoreless the first 36 minutes of the game, UI scored twice in less than two minutes to tie it.
Thompson did redeem himself later in the third quarter when Robinson tried to go deep again, but threw into a crowd where WSU's junior leader in the secondary made the interception at the WSU 41.
A 25-yard pass by backup quarterback Jason Gesser to Farwan Zubedi set up a 48-yard field goal by Rian Lindell to put the Cougars back in front at 17-14 with 2:07 left in the third quarter.
Maybe cautious because of the interception on the previous series, or just wanting to shake WSU up, Idaho decided to turn to its running game, which was nonexistent a week ago. The Vandals gave WSU a full dose of Anthony Tenner and the junior responded with runs of 7, 10, 25 and 4 yards on his way to a 119-yard performance on 29 carries.
More importantly, the success of the running game set up a beautiful play-action pass as the Vandals caught WSU in an all-out blitz. Robertson fired a bullet to Martin on a quick slant-in and the speedy receiver outran everybody for a 43-yard touchdown. Idaho had it's first lead, 21-17, with 13:48 left.
While there was still plenty of time remaining and WSU did get the ball three more times, it quickly became apparent this was UI's game to lose.
WSU again went three downs and out on its next possession.
Despite a fumble on a run, which UI managed to recover, and a touchdown run by Tenner called back because of holding on the next series, the Vandals still managed to find the end zone.
Again catching WSU in a blitz, the Vandals had the right pass play called at the right time. With the ball at the WSU 19, running back Michael Moody ran out looking like he was going to block the blitzing outside linebacker, but instead let him go by. While the linebacker was zeroing in on Robertson, the quarterback calmly lofted the ball out to Moody, who caught the ball at the 5 and, realizing no one was even close to him, calmly trotted in for the score. That made it Idaho 28-17 with 9:52 left.
Birnbaum, who hadn't played since the hit by Tosi, re-entered the game, but didn't have much better success as the confidence of UI's secondary grew after the switch to straight-up man coverage in the second quarter. By the final period, UI's cornerbacks were lining up on the ball, daring WSU's receivers to beat them deep, which was the big difference a year ago.
But WSU couldn't take advantage. After the 7-of-10 start by Birnbaum, WSU's two quarterbacks were only 16 of 43 for 174 yards. The Cougars also had only 194 yards in offense after the 181 yards in the first quarter.
"We just had to pick it up," Tosi said of the defense. "I think in the first quarter we were slow off the ball. But Chris (Nofoaiga) and Rick (Giampetri) kept us going. Then we started making the big plays."
Those big plays left UI as kings and WSU in the Palouse moat.
"You can now walk around the Palouse with your head held high," Tosi said. "They used to be able to come over to Moscow with their heads held high and now we can."
"This is the biggest win in the Big West," Nofoiaga said. "I think there was still some doubt with some people that we could play at this level. This shows we can. It's a great win."
"It's a shock to lose to Idaho," Birnbaum said. "But they made the big plays."
Washington St. 14 0 3 0--17
Idaho 0 0 14 14--28
First Quarter
WSU--Williams 19 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 12:32.
WSU-Burnett 13 run (Lindell kick), 7:06.
Third Quarter
IDA--Nofoaiga 62 fumble return (Davis kick), 8:59.
IDA--Martin 51 pass from Robertson (Davis kick), 7:04.
WSU--FG Lindell 48, 2:07
Fourth Quarter
IDA--Martin 42 pass from Robertson (Davis kick), 13:48.
IDA--Moody 19 pass from Robertson (Davis kick), 9:52.
A--34,873.
WSU IDA
First downs 23 a a 24
Rushes-yards 32- 80 a42-158
Passing a295 a a 285
Comp-Att-Int 23-53-0 13-32-2
Return Yards a a31 a a157
Punts-Avg. 9-39 a5-42
Fumbles-Lost a 1-1 a 1-0
Penalties-Yards 13-114 a 10-66
Time of Possession 31:31 a 28:29
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--WSU--Burnett 18-91, Thielbahr 7-16, Hackett 1-10, Hawkins 1-minus 1, Gesser 3-minus 16, Birnbaum 2-minus 20. Idaho--Tenner 29-118, Dean 2-18, Moody 5-18, Nofoaiga 1-3, Robertson 3-1, Alderson 2-0.
PASSING--WSU--Birnbaum 18-38-0-239, Gesser 5-15-0-56. Idaho--Dean 6-18-1-118, Robertson 7-14-1-167.
RECEIVING--WSU--Hackett 8-99, Zubedi 4-58, Taylor 4-49, Burnett 3-47, Williams 2-34, Scott 1-4, Mencke 1-4. Idaho--Martin 3-100, Prestimonico 3-73, Lacy 2-54, Jones 2-23, Moody 1-19, Townsley 1-16, Tenner 1-0.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

Idaho's James Durrough gives WSU quarterback Steve Birnbaum a shove on a play that had been whistled dead, resulting in a personal-foul penalty

Things have quickly soured for Cougars, gotten sweet for UI

Bert Sahlberg

PULLMAN -- Two years ago, Washington State was sitting near the top of the college football world.
A Pacific-10 Conference title, the school's first Rose Bowl berth in 67 years and even a top 15 ranking.
It seemed for WSU, like the beer commercial says "Life doesn't get any better than this."
That was only two seasons ago, but it might as well be another era. WSU really no longer has nothing in common with that team.
The Cougars' new beer slogan: "Bitter beer face."
WSU certainly was left with sour pusses after losing to Palouse rival Idaho 28-17 Saturday at WSU's Martin Stadium.
Yes, that Idaho that WSU hadn't lost to since 1965.
Yes, the team that WSU holds a 63-16-3 advantage over in the all-time series.
Yes, that Idaho, which was posting a losing season two years ago at 5-6, which was its first losing record since 1981.
Since the Rose Bowl and the 5-6 season, WSU has a record of 3-11 and has lost its last 11. Idaho? It's 11-4, enjoyed two of its biggest program wins, won its first Big West Conference title and made its first appearance ever in a bowl game.
Yeah, it's Sunday, but what the hell has happened? What has changed the fortunes of these teams so drastically in such a short period of time?
It's a much tougher question for WSU than Idaho. The 1997 team was no fluke. It was a talented team which won a number of tough games during the regular season and gave Michigan, the eventual national champion, fits in the Rose Bowl.
Yet even when Northwestern, a Big Ten doormat for a number of years, made its rare appearance in the Rose Bowl, it at least followed it with another bowl appearance and had a couple of winning seasons before falling back into the pack.
WSU, on the other hand, fell quicker than Bill Clinton's approval rating. The Cougars went from first to worst in one year in the Pac-10 and will have a hard time equaling last year's total of three wins this season.
The WSU Rose Bowl team did have a number of seniors and was hurt further when junior quarterback Ryan Leaf decided to forgo his senior year for the NFL draft. Ironically, as his career continues to spiral, so do the Cougars.
Since the end of the Rose Bowl to this week, the Cougars have reportedly lost 40 players due to various reasons -- academic woes, trouble with the law and transfers to other schools, etc.
After last year, backup running back DeJuan Gilmore thought he saw the writing on the wall playing behind Kevin Brown and decided to transfer. Brown, however, was suspended from the team for breaking into a Pullman apartment. Suddenly, WSU is without its two top running backs from a year ago.
Still, things like this do happen. And of the 40, a number of those players would probably never had seen much playing time and left the team -- not an uncommon thing among all schools, Idaho included.
There are a number of things that are still puzzling about today's Cougars. Why, for instance, is Quarterback U suddenly without a solid QB? Three games into the season, quarterbacks Steve Birnbaum and Jason Gesser are combining to complete just barely 50 percent of their passes and have thrown as many interceptions as touchdown passes (3).
The Cougar offensive line starts three seniors and two juniors, all of whom were around during the Rose Bowl season, yet they were manhandled by Idaho in the second half.
Wide receiver Nian Taylor was a big contributor two years ago, but has become erratic this season with hands of stone at times.
The defense also has a number of holdovers from the Rose Bowl team, but just seems to be waiting for bad things to happen, which usually do.
On the Cougars two-deep chart, of the 44 first- and second-team players, 25 are either juniors or seniors. It's the kind of experience you want playing.
They're just not getting the job done.
The rewards for playing in the Rose Bowl, i.e. recruiting, haven't been felt yet either, but it's early. WSU redshirted most of last year's incoming freshmen, which means this is their first year playing and they're still considered freshmen. On its two-depth chart, WSU lists six such freshmen as well as four true freshmen. These players are having to make an impact earlier than expected.
But then, maybe they should. If WSU's regular players are such a step down from the Rose Bowl year and the Cougars really did enjoy a big recruiting effort after that game, those recruits should be the ones playing.
The problem with this is that it's hard to tell how bad the Cougars really are. They might truly be horrible, except their play at times says otherwise. It may just be a confidence thing, but is it really possible Idaho entered the game more confidence than WSU despite not beating the Cougs in more than 30 years?
A lot of questions can be answered after the Cougars get their first win of the season. That, however, probably won't come until Oct. 9 against Southwestern Louisiana.
As bleak as the outlook is for WSU, Idaho is certainly headed in the opposite direction.
Idaho was one of the surprise teams in the nation a year ago and has been on a mission this season to prove last year wasn't a fluke. It validated that with Saturday's win. Even though it came against a weak team, it was a win over a Pac-10 school. Ask Nevada how it felt about its Pac-10 game Saturday, a 72-10 loss to Oregon.
The Vandals lost just four seniors starters from a year ago, yet only start six seniors this season. Idaho has seven sophomores starting and of its top 44 players, 13 are sophomores and six are freshmen. The remaining 25 are either seniors or juniors, the same as WSU.
What Idaho has going for it is that it attracts overachievers. Idaho's big recruiting push doesn't come until January after the Pac-10 schools start narrowing their recruiting lists. When players get dropped by more high-profile schools, UI is there like a vulture.
UI coach Chris Tormey said he couldn't think of any player on the team that had turned down a scholarship to a Pac-10 school to play at Idaho.
"But," he said, "I guarantee you we have a number of kids who can play at that level."
Idaho gets the players like Wil Beck. He's a 305-pound sophomore nose tackle who was only about 6-foot tall when he was recruited. Despite being the 4A Defensive Player of the Year in Washington his senior year in high school, his lack of height kept Pac-10 schools away. At Idaho, he became a starter by the third game of the season as a true freshmen.
And while WSU struggles to find a quarterback, Idaho was down to its No. 3 guy for more than half of Saturday's game. He threw three touchdown passes in the second half alone to pull even with the two Coug QBs for the season.
The scary thing about Idaho is that it should get even better in the years to come. Idaho benefited from its Humanitarian Bowl win with a strong freshmen recruiting class. A number of the linemen were already 270-plus pounds and there's good speed.
And Idaho is in such a good position that it redshirted all of its incoming freshmen. And this is a program that's only in its fourth year at the Division I-A level.
Idaho's still a ways away from being a Top 25-caliber team, but the foundation is certainly taking hold.
After Saturday's win, it's apparent Idaho's a lot closer than WSU.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

Erin Walter

Rachel and Jessica Hart, ABOVE, 11-year-old twins from Spokane, cheer for the Cougars. AT RIGHT, Russ Biggam of Moscow, left, and Gordon Law of Coeur d'Alene wait for the shuttle bus at Moscow that will take them to Pullman. They were all part of the crowd at Saturday's big game

For Vandal fans, it was a nice day to be outside; The University of Idaho's faithful manage to find their way to new 'home' stadium in Pullman

Erin Walter

PULLMAN -- Sunshine, free potato chips and a victory made playing a home game away worth it for Vandal fans.
"Football should be played outside," said Jerry Glass, who drove from Asotin to the University of Idaho vs. Washington State University football game Saturday in a Winnebago with four other football lovers.
"We're from Lewiston, so we cheer for both teams," said Russ Farmer, who had to put his shirt on in the third quarter to avoid sunburning his tattoo-covered back.
Fans in Cougar caps mixed with folks in Vandal helmets, trading good-natured barbs and tossing free Watato potato chips, given out before the game. When Darth Maul was vanquished in WSU's half-time marching band performance of "Star Wars," fans on both sides cheered.
Having to drive or take a bus to Pullman didn't seem to deter UI fans from going to the game.
"It's better than driving over," said Gordon Law, of Coeur d' Alene, about riding one of the free shuttle buses to Pullman.
Law and Russ Biggam both graduated from Moscow High School in 1968. Biggam earned his degree from UI in 1973, Law in 1974.
Before the game, the duo was skeptical UI will be able to average 17,500 fans per home game this season to qualify for Division IA status.
"I've never seen a sellout for a Cougar game," said Biggam, who keeps defense statistics for the Vandals at most home games. While a sunny day may bring the fans to Martin Stadium, the stands may be empty when the cold winds blow, he said.
"You can have a blinding snowstorm in the Kibbie (Dome) and everyone still comes."
Attendance totals Saturday were over 34,000.
Rachel and Jessica Hart, 11-year-old twins from Spokane, cheered for the Cougars behind the west goal post Saturday.
"My family from generation to generation has gone to WSU," Rachel Hart said. "We've always been Cougar fans. They played real good last year, but not as good as they played in 1998, when they won the Rose Bowl."
The twins put faces to the slogan, "My family went to the Rose Bowl and all I got was a T-shirt," but they don't mind. They also got red light-up reflector necklaces from Pasadena.
On the opposite end zone, UI students stuffed the section with painted bodies, rally cries and complaints about not being able to sit in the less-crowded sideline sections.
"Being in Wazzu's stadium they really don't treat you like it's your home field," said Wesley Hunt, 18, a freshman English major at UI from Hermiston, Ore.
"We tried to get over behind the home team, but it was impossible. And the announcer is a Cougar announcer," said Brett Caron, 23, a UI senior chemistry major from Carson City, Nev.
Both Hunt and Caron painted their chests and wore Vandal helmets festooned with pom-poms. Hunt said games in Martin Stadium are nice because more fans can support the team.
Glenda, Lindsey and Kim Vaagen of Colville, Wash., came to Pullman Saturday to watch their son and brother, Glenn Vaagen, play for the Vandals.
"I liked the Kibbie Dome better, it was just Idaho's," said Lindsey Vaagen, 16. But "I like it outside because it's louder."
Before the game, Gordon Law joked that "If (the Cougars) lose, Coach Price will say 'these away games are killing us'." Letting the Vandals host the game must have made the difference, as UI pulled ahead in the third quarter to win the game.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

Air attack continues to be no passing fancy

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- When Idaho plays Washington State, there is no clash in philosophies. Both teams prefer to pass first, think later.
But among the several ways in which Idaho displayed superior experience and persistence than its Palouse neighbor, in its 28-17 victory Saturday, was with its running game, led by a quiet 114-yard performance by junior Anthony Tenner.
After almost abandoning their ground attack in favor of five-receiver sets the previous week against Auburn, the Vandals periodically employed one- or two-receiver schemes, particularly in the first half, and tried to confound WSU's pass-rush with quick handoffs to Tenner. They wound up outrushing Washington State 154-79.
"We knew they were going to try to blitz us a lot," Tenner said, "so we had to run by it."
It's a decent bet the Cougars will turn increasingly to their own running game as true freshman Deon Burnett learns more of the playbook. He looked sharp at times, particularly in the first quarter, finishing with 91 yards (103 net) and catching three passes for 47 yards.
"I think I'm catching onto the offense and the schemes, just being cerebral on the field," Burnett said.
The Cougars' rushing totals were diminished by four sacks for 36 yards.
IN A CORNER -- Washington State is still trying to move Lamont Thompson back to safety, but it's an uphill battle. The junior did play his natural position intermittently, but he was tending his new cornerback spot on a key Idaho pass play in the third quarter.
Thompson, suddenly seeing the ball overhead, tipped a Greg Robertson pass into the air, then found himself out of position as the ball floated into Rossi Martin's hands. Martin sailed 51 yards for a touchdown that tied the score at 14-14.
A minor injury to LeJuan Gibbons, and the obvious inexperience of freshman Virgil Williams, prevented the Cougars from wholeheartedly moving Thompson back to his safety spot, from where he once intercepted 10 passes in a 14-game stretch. Williams was badly burned on a slant that gave Martin a 42-yard TD to give Idaho a 21-17 lead.
Yet Thompson did get an interception, the 12th of his career.
His replacement at safety, Billy Newman, also stole a pass, robbing Idaho of a possible touchdown in the second quarter. Newman also made 11 tackles.
THE NEW TORMEY -- Idaho coach Chris Tormey continued to belie his image as a conservative coach, calling a dive on fourth-and-2 from the WSU 31-yard line in the first quarter and trying a fake punt in the second period. The first gamble worked, the second didn't.
Tormey was also willing to go for a first down on fourth-and-5 from the Cougar 36 later in the second quarter, but the Vandals drew a delay-of-game penalty and prudently punted.
ETC. -- Lewiston High graduate Brad Rice collected 10 tackles for the Vandals, sacking Jason Gesser on fourth down to end WSU's last possession. ... Among WSU's many indiscretions came at the start of that final possession, when Leaford Hackett fielded a punt near the goal line and was tackled by Jason Daniel inside the 1-yard line. Only the official's judgment spared the Cougars a safety. ... Hackett, though, caught eight passes for 99 yards. ... Chris Nofoaiga led Idaho with 11 tackles, including two for losses.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

Idaho 28, WSU 17
Quick fact

Since its last victory over Washington State in 1965, Idaho was 1-24 against Pac-10 Conference schools, defeating only Oregon State 41-22 in 1984

Key plays
After three completions for 64 yards, WSU turns to the running game as freshman running back Deon Burnett bursts up the middle and breaks two tackles at the 2 to score on a 13-yard run. That gives WSU a 14-0 lead in the first quarter.
On WSU's first possession of the second half, the Cougars are putting on an impressive drive and have the ball at the UI 23 facing third-and-12. Quarterback Steve Birnbaum drops back to pass but is drilled by UI defensive tackle Mao Tosi, who forces a fumble. Linebacker Chris Nofoaiga picks up the ball and returns it 62 yards for a touchdown and UI is on the board, trailing 14-7.
After WSU goes three downs and out on the ensuing possession, UI ties the game on a 49-yard touchdown pass from Greg Robertson to Rossi Martin. Martin manages to leap high for the pass as WSU cornerback Lamont Thompson falls down, paving the way for the score.
Early in the fourth quarter, Idaho has the ball at the WSU 43 but faces a third-and-6. Since WSU has been blitzing a lot on third down, UI counters with a quick slant pass to Martin. The play works to perfection as Martin outruns everyone to the end zone to give UI a 21-17 lead.
Next games
While Idaho has a bye and won't play until Oct. 2 at Wyoming, WSU returns to action Saturday when it plays host to Arizona at 1 p.m. Arizona lost to Stanford 50-22 to drop to 2-2.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

What Vandals and Cougars said afterward ...

It's in my top 10. It's right up there with the Humanitarian Bowl, maybe even bigger. Now we know we can do it. We know there is no one left on our schedule that we can't compete with.
UI coach Chris Tormey
(Now) you don't have to walk into stores and see all of the Wazzu hats and all the Cougar merchandise doubling the Idaho stuff.
UI nose tackle Wil Beck
This is a great win. Of any game to win this season, this is the one to win. I've hated the Cougars ever since I was a kid.
Wil Beck
I saw where they talked about how they had some tough practices this week getting ready for the game. We have tough practices day in and day out all season.
Beck
The coaches read us a letter from an old player who played here around 1947, B.R. Emerson. He wrote about how he listened to the Auburn game and how he wanted to be here today, but he couldn't come. He has a terminal illness. I just want to say thank you to him. It was a great letter. He's a true Vandal.
UI linebacker Chris Nofoaiga
It was kind of a slap in the face maybe.
Nofoaiga, on the several WSU players who walked off the field without shaking hands afterward
I'm sure I will be telling the kids and grandkids about this game. It may get inflated some, though.
UI quarterback Greg Robertson
We've played in the environments at Auburn and LSU and it's so difficult. This was a big game too, but it was only 10 miles from home. It's a much different type of environment. But after playing in those kind of games, we were much more prepared today.
Robertson
There were some problems -- it was just because I think we were maybe unprepared as an O-line. Not necessarily when I came out. Unprepared just on the simple plays. There was some confusion ... not throughout the game, but at critical times.
WSU offensive tackle Ryan Tujague
Idaho changed their defense up (after WSU's first two touchdowns). They saw we were weak on the blitz, and we couldn't get the ball off. They adjusted and we didn't.
UI quarterback Jason Gesser
I felt the momentum shift in the game when we should have had that touchdown in the third quarter when the ball was dropped. If that ball is caught, we go up 21 points and it's a while new game.
Gesser
I wasn't out cold, I just got rung pretty good. I really don't know how he got to me. I just don't remember.
WSU quarterback Steve Birnbaum, on the game-turning fumble.
It took (the Vandals, in the second half) a long time to get out onto the field. They kind of wandered out. They were playing with their third-string quarterback. We're ahead 14-0. We should take command and pound them and put them away. Instead ... we don't react to adversity. We reacted terribly.
WSU coach Mike Price
I congratulate Idaho, coach Tormey, on a great job. They outplayed us and our hats go off to them.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

Barry Kough

Washington State University running back Deon Burnett can't escape the grasp of University of Idaho strong safety Bryson Gardner during the second quarter. Burnett had 91 yards rushing in Saturday's game, but WSU finished with only 79 as a team

Suddenly, a rivalry that's worthy of the name; Next question: Is the Palouse big enough for two D-1 overachievers

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Washington State players, you could tell, just wanted to scram. Or scrum -- is that the rugby term? They wanted either to brawl with these marauding ingrates from Moscow, or run inside the locker room and never come out.
So several of them just walked away, rather than shake hands and hug and talk about coaches and women.
All the postgame rituals were cut short Saturday after the Cougars' 28-17 loss to Idaho. Even the group prayer -- generally, some 20 players from each team, kneeling in a circle at the 50-yard line -- drew just a smattering of Cougars, while Idaho players were off singing the fight song with the Vandal band.
After what must have been a simply delightful team meeting, a few Washington State players peeled off their jerseys and, as requested, traipsed upstairs to the interview room. Ryan Tujague and Billy Newman, two of the very few Cougars who are consistently playing well, wore their ostensibly lucky T-shirts -- their last layer of protective armor. Tujague's armor declared "My boss is a Jewish carpenter.'' Newman's armor was a blue and red Superman logo. Those who had no armor -- an unprecedented number -- didn't show up.
The Cougars are feeling usurped these days. Their identity has been co-opted from all sides. First, the University of Washington hired Rick Neuheisel -- so there are two "player's coaches'' in the state. That leaves Mike Price with one fewer recruiting angle.
Now the University of Idaho has stolen the Cougars' triumphant underdog shtick. Surely this was at the heart of the players' moral nausea as they skirted the handshakes and the Q's and A's: To see the Vandals jump and frolic and gloat, just as the Cougars did repeatedly in their 1997 dream season, was just too much.
The Martin Stadium issue only clouded the Cougars' emotional climate. They are, after all, loaning their digs to the Vandals to help them score NCAA credibility. And this game was, after all, considered Idaho's home game, though Vandal fans were relegated like Indians to their remote reservation at the east end of the stadium.
For three decades, this Idaho-WSU thing has been a rivalry in name only. It seemed to mean something terribly, mysteriously important to the old-timers in, say, the coffee shop at the University Inn. But nobody else understood the point. In a 19-year period ending last year, the schools bothered to play each other only twice.
Last week Price described the Palouse rivalry as "a respect thing. There are Huskies and Broncos running around, for both our teams. I can honestly say I cheer for the Vandals when they're not playing the Cougs. I can't say that about some other schools.''
But at some point in the second half Saturday, this rivalry rewound 35 years. Inside graying heads in the Vandal cheering section, there sprang visions of Pumpkins, of Dee Andros, who had led the Vandals past the Cougs 28-13 in 1964. These are the same visions being evoked at Oregon State, where Dennis Erickson is trying to finagle the first winning record since Andros in 1970.
The Cougars, when their 14-0 lead vanished in the haze of a devastating quarterback-sack and a momentary loss of footing in the defensive backfield, reacted the same way they had reacted against Utah and Stanford -- with a stunned acquiescence.
That's the reason you don't hear WSU fans, or even players, taking great consolation in the fact that, yes, their offense often moves in the right direction. All the Cougars' assets are offset by this strange passivity at critical points in the game.
In any case, a rivalry is reborn. Can it be anything but tense? Where else in the country are there two Division I-A football programs squeezed so closely together in such a sparsely populated area? Can both be expected to prosper?
It would be too much to say the emperor of the Palouse has no clothes. But he's down to nothing but a Superman T-shirt.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

Wildcats understand Cougars' frustrations

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Arizona can identify with many of Washington State's miseries: the turnovers, the mislaid defensive legacy, how it feels to lose to Stanford by four touchdowns.
But there's a difference in scale. The Cougars were expected to place perhaps ninth in the Pac-10. The Wildcats were expected to contend for a national championship.
With their prospects plummeting at approximately the same rate, these two underachievers will play at 1 p.m. Saturday at Washington State.
The Wildcats' 2-2 record is both embarrassing and flattering. It doesn't reflect the sweep of their losses (by a combined 91-29), the anxiety of their narrow win over Texas Christian, or the thud of their fallen hopes.
The reason the Cats drew a No. 4 national ranking to start the season, of course, was that they returned 16 starters from a 12-1 team.
To judge by coach Dick Tomey's comments, they weren't the right starters, though they included talented running back Trung Canidate, stellar receiver Dennis Northcutt and the Scrambler Twins at quarterback, Keith Smith and Ortege Jenkins.
"I think we were rated based on the number of returning people and not necessarily who they were,'' Tomey said. "The fact that they were high-profile skill players was focused on, rather than who was not returning.''
He's thinking of players like cornerback Chris McAlister. Yet the three other starters in the secondary did return, and the Cats thought their linebacker trio, led by Marcus Bell, might be their best ever -- a lofty notion in light of the school's marvelous defenses this decade. So it's anybody's guess why Arizona is blowing tackles and allowing a 64-percent completion ratio.
In any case, Tomey isn't dodging responsibility. "I think teams are a mirror of their coach, and right now I don't like what I see,'' he said. "We need to make this seem like a bad dream.''
It must have seemed that way Sunday morning: Tomey scheduled a 7 a.m. workout, after a game that had stretched almost to 11 the previous night. That was his reaction to the Wildcats' 50-22 loss at home against Stanford. They had managed to one-up the Cougars, who had lost 54-17 at Stanford the previous week.
In the Desert Swarm days, the Wildcats would go five weeks without giving up 50 points. At mid-decade, Arizona and WSU were setting regional and national standards for stinginess. "This used to be a defensive battle -- a 7-3 game,'' WSU coach Mike Price noted, "because our defenses were so powerful. That's not the way they are right now.
"Arizona isn't playing very well, and I'm surprised by that, and disappointed for Dick and Arizona,'' said Price, whose 11-year tenure is exceeded in the Pac-10 only by Tomey's 13-year reign. "They're one of the teams I thought was going to win the (conference) championship. But the year isn't over yet.''
Both teams have battled self-doubts since their surprising season-openers -- the Cougars showing little life against Utah, and Arizona getting drubbed 41-7 by Penn State.
"I thought we could have a rough start (this season),'' Tomey said. "and I was certainly not oblivious to the fact that we could be overrated. I'm surprised we're not farther along, and I'm surprised by the way we've lost, but I have no delusions of grandeur.''
The quarterback rotation that worked so smoothly last year has developed some glitches. The QBs' completion rates are still excellent -- Smith at 71 percent, Jenkins at 64 -- but opponents, aided by Smith's sore ankle, are devising ways to curb their once-lethal scrambles. The two quarterbacks have been sack-prone and are responsible for all eight of Arizona's turnovers.
Still, the team speed on offense, between Canidate (a 5.8 rushing average), Northcutt (31 catches, 5 touchdowns) and the two quarterbacks, is difficult to match, and the Wildcats are favored by 13 points. These teams are free-falling in slightly different realms.

Friday, September 24, 1999

Barry Kough

Fourteen games after being named Washington State's No. 1 quarterback, Steve Birnbaum finally appears to have fought off the challengers to his throne, while gradually impressing teammates and fans with his resilience. Now if he can only win some games

No trick to perserverance; Steve Birnbaum has spent five years proving his worth to Cougar football; now comes his reward

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- On the sideline, in the fourth quarter of the Cougars' latest disaster, Washington State players sensed a shifting of the winds. Their yearlong quarterback intrigue had reached a denouement. They sensed it among themselves, and they sensed it in the blunt, vulgar judgment of the mob at their back.
Steve Birnbaum was on his feet, warming up -- despite the whiplash, the bruised hip, the concussion -- and he wanted to get back in the game. Heaven knows that was nothing new, but now seemingly everyone felt the same way. Even the fickle Martin Stadium crowd seemed to want the slow, the star-crossed, the beleaguered No. 13 on the field.
"You're going back in, Birny?'' said the exuberant Paul Mencke, who used to vie with Birnbaum for playing time. "Heck yeah. Heck yeah! We've got this game!''
Alas, Mencke was wrong. The Cougars lost 28-17 to Idaho, the most disheartening of their 11 consecutive defeats. And Birnbaum had lasted only two possessions before landing on the same inflamed hip and giving way again to Jason Gesser.
Still, the shift had occurred. Gesser, the freshman, had performed poorly in his second-half appearance, after Birnbaum had been steamrolled by Idaho's Mao Tosi.
So the Cougars are out of saviors. There are no more Gessers or Menckes on the shelf. This week, coach Mike Price rattled off a list of possible lineup changes for the Cougars' game Saturday against Arizona, and he made not the slightest mention of quarterbacks. A reporter asked if he were thinking of removing the red shirt from Matt Kegel, the rookie from Montana who is Ryan Leaf's cousin. Before the words were out of his mouth, Price slammed the door on that nascent romance. "No,'' he said, "not at all.''
The winds could change again at any time, of course. That's life when you're 0-3. But for now, for the first time since Leaf absconded for the NFL in January 1998, the Cougars have a truly undisputed quarterback, and Birnbaum is he.
Who would have thought it?
For one thing, he is so unlike Leaf, his friend and predecessor. There is something in Birnbaum's steady gaze that suggests self-confidence, but his youthful features, his moonlike face, make no assumptions about anything. Even as a fifth-year senior, he claims no privileges.
His style of leadership -- quiet, personal, communicative -- hasn't profited from the comparison to Leaf or the vagueness of his starting role for the past two years. In his early years at Washington State, his series of injuries and his slightly fragile appearance, despite his 6-foot-4 frame, hatched the notion that he couldn't possibly endure the starting role.
But Birnbaum eventually wins your admiration -- if not with his persistence, or his improved strength, or his countless hours in the film room, then with his card tricks.
Growing up at Chino Hills, a newish rural community east of Los Angeles, he made frequent pilgrimages to a shop at Disneyland that sold gags and magic supplies. He began working on sleight-of-hand maneuvers, and his teammates now say, somewhat surprisingly, that their modest quarterback is often the life of the party.
His specialty: making a card levitate. "It's fun to see people amazed and blown away and kind of scared: 'No way!' '' he says.
He also does impressions: Jim Carrey, Mike Tyson, certain teammates and coaches. Whether his repertoire includes Price, nobody is willing to say.
Birnbaum's persistence seems so natural, so unstrained, that you're not surprised to learn that he has always displayed some form of it.
"When he first went out for football (in junior high),'' said his father, Mark Birnbaum, a former football coach who is now vice-president of a women's clothing company in Los Angeles, "I thought for sure he'd be a receiver. They had some superstar (returning) at quarterback. (The coach) said, 'Who wants to be quarterback?' Steve raised his hand, and everybody was like, 'What, you've got to be kidding.' He just kept plugging away. That's kind of been his thing. People have always said, 'You're too skinny, you're too slow.' And he just doesn't listen to it.''
As soon as Leaf left Washington State, Birnbaum's troubles began. Late in the Rose Bowl season of 1997, he had hobbled on what was believed to be a cartilage problem, or maybe something less serious. In January, it was learned he had played for half the season on a cruciate ligament that wasn't merely torn but detached. That opened a few eyes.
He underwent major surgery and was held from contact drills in spring camp. During that and later trials, his girlfriend of now three years, a public-relations major named Kyla Rieger, "acted as my mom, my doctor, my coach and my girlfriend,'' he says.
Then came the exasperating 1998 season, when the Cougars lost their last eight games, the final four of which saw Birnbaum and the sophomore Mencke rotating at quarterback as frequently as every possession. Mencke, though less experienced, lent a touch of electricity and a scrambling ability that were beyond the older quarterback's ken.
"Last year, when everybody was looking to Mencke to get the job done, and no one really had faith in (Birnbaum), I think that hurt him psychologically,'' safety Billy Newman says.
Birnbaum doesn't disagree, though he is careful to note that his friendship with Mencke, who is now the No. 3 quarterback and a reserve wide receiver, has survived the 1998 ordeal.
At one point in the season, "our biggest opportunity for a big play was for Paul to drop back, and the line drop, and for him to scramble 30 yards,'' Birnbaum says. "And, yeah, he was the one doing that. So it was, 'Go, Paul, make something happen. Please.' Yeah, it sucked: 'Well, I'm useless. So much for my arm.' That was the low point.''
Birnbaum's dreary 1998 statistics -- six touchdowns, 11 interceptions -- can be attributed to his lack of mobility, to little glitches in his throwing motion, to inexperienced receivers, and to a healthy dose of bad luck.
"He's got the wrong number -- 13,'' says WSU quarterbacks coach Eric Price. "Last year, it seemed like every time a ball was tipped, or dropped, or picked off and run back for a touchdown, it seemed to always happen to Steve. I told him, 'Man, you're the unluckiest kid I've ever seen.'
"He's an amazing kid. If he had any other personality, some of the things he's been through might have ruined him.''
Birnbaum has a knack for ignoring derisive comments, especially from fans, but his father, who attends as many Cougar games as possible, isn't so oblivious.
"As a parent, you kind of go, 'If they just knew him.' '' Mark Birnbaum says. "He's a great guy. His (12-year-old) sister thinks he's God. He's been through two knee surgeries, an elbow surgery, he's been knocked unconscious. And he just keeps coming back.''
The moment the 1998 season was done, Gesser turned the quarterback race into a three-way scramble, and the freshman seemed to usurp Mencke's role as the fan favorite. At times, Birnbaum seemed to be running an irrelevant third.
"The radio, the press, TV -- everyone was like, 'Well, we've got this Gesser guy and thank God.' '' Birnbaum recalls. "So I was like, 'Well, I'm done.' But as I got farther into it, winter conditioning came around, waking up at 5:30 to work out with the team at 6, and I was thinking, 'I'm not doing this to be third string.' I was kind of like the dumb workhorse, doing everything right. But not just going through the motions. Working hard, every opportunity I had.''
In spring and fall drills, he settled further and further into this workhorse mentality.
"Any kind of advantage I thought he (Gesser) was getting, I would just keep it to myself and say, 'You know what? I don't care. When it's my shot, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to make the right read. I'm going to use my five years of being here to my advantage.' ''
In regard to Gesser as well as Mencke, Birnbaum stresses the civility of their rivalry. But during the heat of their competition, he was forced to objectify his young friend: Here's this freshman. Where's he from? Hawaii or something? He hasn't bled here. He hasn't sweat here for four years. His only advantage is that he's never lost a game with the Cougars.
"It was almost like, internally, I was thinking he didn't deserve to start. If he ended up starting, he deserved it -- he beat me out.''
But he didn't. Two weeks before the season-opener, Birnbaum was surprisingly named the starter, and through three otherwise forgettable Cougar losses, he has finally become entrenched in the No. 1 role.
His surgeries, his recoveries, his exhaustive knowledge of the Cougar offense, the way he keeps rising like the moon, these things have gradually impressed his teammates. In the huddle, he is a calming influence.
"He calls the play, and he gives you those eyes -- he's got these eyes that tell you he knows what he's doing,'' running back Jeremy Thielbahr says. "You look at him and you just go, 'OK, I know what I've got to do.' ''
But a funny thing has happened. A few months ago, Mark Birnbaum told his son a series of jokes, "and I didn't get any of them,'' the quarterback says. "I was like, 'What's wrong with me?' I'm out of touch with how I normally am, because of the way things have gone in football. I'm not quite the funny guy I used to be.''
He smiles at the problem. He knows it's temporary. When the quarterback is gone, the entertainer will return. And if he can somehow make the Cougars levitate, it will be his greatest card trick ever.

Saturday, September 25, 1999

WSU readies for cat fight; Cougars, Wildcats look to ease pain of rocky starts as they collide today in Pullman

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Mention the 1997 overtime game between Arizona and Washington State, and Wildcats quarterback Ortege Jenkins comes clean immediately.
Yes, he failed to notice an open receiver in the end zone on the deciding play. Yes, he made life difficult for an old high-school buddy. And, yes, afterward he wrongly predicted that the Cougars would lose to Washington in the season finale.
He returns to Pullman with a clear conscience and even pleasant memories as Arizona faces WSU at 1 p.m. today.
"I know coach (Mike) Price was a little bit upset with me two years ago when I made that comment after the game,'' Jenkins said this week, broaching the subject on his own. "I apologized to Ryan (Leaf) and those guys and said the comments I made were out of frustration. I told them how I really feel.''
That didn't stop the Cougars, or at least their fans, from dredging up the remark before the rematch in Tucson, Ariz., last year. But the Wildcats, with Jenkins rotating at quarterback with Keith Smith, vanquished the Cougs 41-7.
So the slate is clean. Today's game is less about revenge than self-examination: two disappointed teams returning to the basics of football and conscience.
The Cougars, 0-3, will try to avoid a school-record 12th straight loss; the Wildcats, 2-2, will try to rediscover whatever chemistry had produced their 12-1 record last year and their preseason No. 4 ranking this year.
Jenkins' performance here in 1997, one of the most striking of his freshman season, almost derailed the Cougars' drive to the Rose Bowl. He threw for 246 yards and four touchdowns, pulling the Wildcats to within 35-34 with a TD pass in overtime.
On the ensuing two-point conversion try, Jenkins faked a handoff, swept right, and was engulfed at the 3-yard line by LeJuan Gibbons and Duane Stewart, cinching the WSU win.
Later, the video revealed how close the Cougars had come to losing: Brandon Manumaleuna, now the Cats' starting tight end, had been open in the end zone.
"To be honest, that was my freshman year and I didn't even know there was a guy coming off (on a pass route),'' Jenkins said. "I just missed him. Those are some of the things that happen.''
Jenkins awaits a reunion today with Gibbons, the WSU cornerback who had been his tailback at Jordan High in Long Beach, Calif. In that 1997 game, the quarterback burned Gibbons on several first-half passes, on a critical pass-interference call, then on the OT touchdown.
That cost Gibbons his starting job, and he didn't win it back until this season.
"I wasn't really attacking him,'' Jenkins said. "It just happened that he was on that side. It wasn't like were going after LeJuan, because our scouting report said he was the best DB out there. Our plan was to go away from him. He stepped up and played marvelously in the second half. A lot of people don't remember that.''
Today, presumably, the Wildcats will try to exploit the opposite corner, where Lamont Thompson is still trying to make the adjustment from free safety. The Cougars' efforts to groom Virgil Williams for that position are still being delayed by a bruised nerve in the freshman's neck. He is listed as doubtful.
Jenkins' distinction begins with his given name, Ortege, which he pronounces with a long E followed by a soft GZ sound. There is no Hispanic element in his background, but "my dad felt I was going to be something special, so he wanted to give me a special name. When I was younger I didn't really like it, because people didn't really know how to say it. People made fun of my name. Now I'm really proud of it. I uphold it and carry it high.''
If Washington State and other Pac-10 teams are now trying to avoid the quarterback rotations that enjoyed a vogue last year, Arizona remains wed to the alternation of Jenkins and Smith. Individually, they represent a revival of the small, mobile, double-threat QB, symbolized by the image of Jenkins somersaulting over three Washington defenders for a touchdown last year.
At the moment, though, Arizona's magic is missing in action. For one thing, both quarterbacks are passing well but leaky protection and ill-fated scrambles have led to numerous sacks.
"Now that we're 2-2, a lot of people are going to speculate about the rotation -- is it good? Is it bad?'' Jenkins said. "But it's what we do. It's what we believe in. We'll play it out to the end. I don't think it's a big factor in us not playing well. We just need to buckle down and play football.''
That will be the general idea for everyone today.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Mike Venso

Washington State University running back Deon Burnett can't find any running room as Arizona's, DaShon Polk, bottom, Austin Uku, left, and Marcus Bell stop him on a second-quarter play. The Wildcats topped the Cougars 30-24 on a last-second touchdown pass Saturday at Pullman's Martin Stadium

Arizona nearly blown over in win; Blustery conditions make it hard for both "Cats, Cougs to put points on the board

Doug Bauer

PULLMAN -- The Washington State Cougars and Arizona Wildcats each had enough demons to battle as it was.
And then Mother Nature chimed in.
The course of Arizona's 30-24 Pacific-10 Conference football victory over WSU Saturday was swayed by Palouse wind gusts that fluctuated erratically between 22 and 32 mph throughout the game.
For three quarters, the Wildcats not only battled an inspired Cougar defense, but the elements as well.
"Since I've been a head coach, I don't think I've ever played in conditions like that, where it made such a huge difference in which way you were going," Arizona coach Dick Tomey said.
The Wildcats finally adjusted to their surroundings in the fourth quarter, which ended when wide receiver Bobby Wade came down with a controversial 42-yard touchdown reception from Keith Smith as time expired.
Smith heaved a perfect spiral high into the wind, and Wade was waiting in the end zone, where his catch was ruled complete by the nearest official.
"It was tough. The wind was really swirling," Smith said. "I just tried to throw it real hard to get it through the wind, because I knew if I got a tight spiral it would get there, and if not the wind would've caught it and hung it up."
The game started under a windy Palouse sky, which was littered with dust and whipped across the Martin Stadium turf. Until the final quarter, when Arizona put two touchdowns on the board, neither team was able to score with the wind in its face, or even accomplish anything that was very positive.
"The play calling was decided by which way the wind was blowing," Smith said. "You definitely wanted to throw your big-play balls with the wind."
WSU kicker Rian Lindell used the breeze to his advantage in the second quarter, when he equaled his career-best with a 52-yard field goal.
Arizona kicker Mark McDonald didn't fare as well, missing four field goal tries between 32 and 53 yards.
"It might have affected them a little more than it affected us," WSU coach Mike Price said, "because their kicker was off and they were having a real hard time throwing into the wind."
"It was kind of a ball-control game," added WSU quarterback Jason Gesser, who came off the bench to lead a Cougar rally that tied the score at 17-all. "We figured that if we got points going against the wind, great, but when we were going into the wind, just unload. That was the strategy today."
Arizona's final play hushed a WSU crowd that was hoping to see the Cougars end their current 12-game losing streak. The silence wasn't due to shock from the reception alone, but from the pass as well.
"It just took an incredible arm to get the ball up against a wind like that," said Tomey, whose team's 1997 venture to Martin Stadium ended in a narrow 35-34 overtime loss to WSU. "I guess if you want a crazy finish, apparently you just come up here. The last one was crazy, and this one was even crazier."
Arizona7 0 10 13--30
Washington St. 0 10 0 14--24
First Quarter
ARI--Canidate 1 run (McDonald kick), 6:20.
Second Quarter
WSU--Zubedi 11 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 11:31.
WSU--FG Lindell 52, 2:46.
Third Quarter
ARI--Safety, Birnbaum tackled in end zone, 11:20
ARI--Canidate 2 run (Smith pass to Manumaleuna), 5:24.
Fourth Quarter
WSU--Burnett 2 run (Lindell kick), 10:15.
ARI--Canidate 4 run (McDonald kick), 4:39.
WSU--Burnett 55 run (Lindell kick), 4:14.
ARI--Wade 42 pass from Smith, 00:00.
A--26,787.
ARI WSU
First downs 25 a a 13
Rushes-yards 60-249 a30-153
Passing a251 a a 165
Comp-Att-Int18-33-0 15-24-0
Return Yards a 100 a a 34
Punts-Avg. 5-37 a 6-41
Fumbles-Lost a 0-0 a 2-0
Penalties-Yards 8-52 a 8-45
Time of Possession 38:26 a 21:34
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Arizona, Canidate 34-158, Smith 13-54, Briggs 6-21, Northcutt 1-15, Callen 3-7, Jenkins 3-minus 6. Washington State, Burnett 13-96, Gesser 6-45, Hawkins 7-16, Birnbaum 1-(minus 1), Thielbahr 3-(minus 3).
PASSING--Arizona, Smith 12-25-0-190, Jenkins 6-8-0-61. Washington State, Birnbaum 12-19-0-112, Gesser 3-5-0-53.
RECEIVING--Arizona, Northcutt 5-107, Wade 5-100, Canidate 4-16, Leonard 2-18, Manumaleuna 1-8, Callen 1-2. Washington State, Hackett 7-97, Zubedi 3-35, Thielbahr 2-10, Burnett 1-10, Williams 1-7, Taylor 1-6.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Mike Venso

Washington State University quarterback Jason Gesser tries to elude an Arizona defender. Despite rallying the Cougars in the final quarter, Gesser saw WSU come up on the short end of a 30-24 setback to Arizona Saturday

WSU's Gesser sees positives through dark clouds

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Surrounded by bitter faces and wearing a worrisome ice pack on his throwing hand, Jason Gesser still managed to speak of Washington State's latest loss as its clearest sign of hope.
"It gives me hope for next week, it gives me hope for next year, it gives me hope for two years from now," the freshman quarterback said after directing two fourth-quarter touchdowns in the Cougars' 30-24 loss Saturday to Arizona, "because we've got the talent on our team; we've just got to go out there and use it."
Gesser took the field late in the third period, after senior starter Steve Birnbaum absorbed the latest of his recent series of injuries: He hurt his groin while recovering a Deon Burnett fumble in the end zone.
With the Cougars trailing 17-10, Gesser hit Leaford Hackett for 33 yards and scrambled for 19 yards himself to set up Burnett's 2-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter.
When Arizona answered with Trung Canidate's 4-yard scoring run with 4:39 left, Gesser and Burnett improvised a play that sent the freshman running back, aided by a downfield block by Farwan Zubedi, dashing 55 yards for another tying TD.
"We had a draw on, and I saw a blitz coming," said Gesser, who had sprained a thumb on his first series and attempted only five passes. "I was like, 'I'm going to get him the ball quick,' because if he gets past this blitz he's going to make a big gain on this. So I didn't even fake the draw. I just gave him the ball. And he saw it too, so he and I were on the same page. I saw him take off. That's one of the best feelings in the world."
Gesser's performance came in stark contrast to his pallid showing in a similar second-half appearance in a 28-17 loss to Idaho the previous week.
"Last week I kind of went in worried about everything," he said. "When you're worried about things, you're not going to play your best. This week I just said, 'Let's just go out and have some fun,' and I guess that helped my game out a lot."
Gesser, though, betrayed his inexperience on WSU's final possession. On third-and-2 from the Arizona 43-yard line, a broken play resulted in a Burnett no-gain.
"It was supposed to go to the weak side, and I called it to the strong side," Gesser said. "That was my fault."
That forced the Cougars to punt, and Kareem Anderson underestimated the wind and boomed the ball into the end zone. That put Arizona on the 20, and two Keith Smith keepers and a 14-yard completion to Dennis Northcutt set up the Wildcats' winning Hail Mary pass.
Birnbaum passed 12-for-19 for 112 yards in his one of his better performances, hitting Zubedi on a pretty fade route for an 11-yard TD in the second quarter. But when asked who will start at quarterback against California on Saturday, WSU coach Mike Price said he hasn't decided.
BUSY LINEBACKERS -- Washington State's linebacker trio of Steve Gleason, Raonall Smith and Curtis Holden combined for 40 tackles, with Gleason submitting an especially strong, 16-tackle performance.
"If you can feel good about a loss," Gleason said, "I feel better about this loss than last week's loss."
As Holden noted, however, "We need to make turnovers." Arizona played largely error-free.
HAIL KEITH -- Arizona quarterback Keith Smith evidently has a flair for the type of Hail Mary passes that won this game. As a senior in high school, he completed three such passes.
"It just took an incredible arm to get the ball up against the wind like that," said Arizona coach Dick Tomey, whose team fought the 20- to 30-mph winds in the second and fourth quarters.
"If you want crazy finishes," Tomey said, "apparently you just come up here when we play. The last one was crazy; this one was crazy."
He was referring to WSU's 35-34 overtime win over Arizona in 1997.
ETC. -- Hackett caught seven passes for the Cougars for 97 yards. Slump-ridden Nian Taylor, supposedly docked from the starting lineup, started anyway because WSU opened the game with a four-receiver set. Taylor caught only one pass and dropped two others.... It was also another rough game for WSU's Lamont Thompson, trying to make the transition from safety to cornerback. The Wildcats often threw his way, and the junior missed a couple of tackles.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Arizona 30, WSU 24
Quick fact

With Kent winning Saturday, the Cougars' 12-game losing streak moved from third to second among the nation's longest. Leading now, with 14 straight, is South Carolina.
Key plays
On third-and-10, Arizona receiver Malosi Leonard breaks a tackle by Lamont Thompson to nab a first down and set up the Wildcats' first touchdown, a 1-yard run by Trung Canidate.
With WSU leading 10-7 in the third quarter, running back Deon Burnett loses the ball on a sudden cutback, and it trickles into the end zone. Quarterback Steve Birnbaum recovers to prevent a touchdown, but the safety seems to send momentum Arizona's way.
The Cougars' Kareem Anderson booms an amazing 57-yard punt against harsh winds, but Dennis Northcutt arcs around WSU's coverage and streaks 68 yards to set up a 2-yard Canidate touchdown run.
Arizona's Keith Smith combines QB draws with a 20-yard completion to Northcutt to direct a scoring drive capped by Canidate's 4-yard run, giving the Wildcats a 24-17 lead in the fourth quarter.
With the score tied 24-24 with five seconds left, Smith hurls an ideal Hail Mary pass to an end-zone crowd, and it lands in the arms of wide receiver Bobby Wade. Officials rule the catch legitimate as time expires.
WSU's next game
The Cougars remain at home to play California at 1 p.m. Saturday. The Bears edged Arizona State 24-23.

Monday, September 27, 1999

Mike Venso

Washington State's Leaford Hackett beats Arizona's Leland Gayles for a 33-yard reception from quarterback Jason Gesser in the fourth quarter. The Cougars got things rolling in the fourth quarter of Saturday's game, but were upended by the Wildcats 30-24 on the final play of the game at WSU's Martin Stadium

Whistle blowing on the whistle blowers; Despite having someone else to blame, Cougars still hurting from latest setback

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- To the zebras' credit, they served up a comment afterward. Not an especially good one. But if we lived in a totalitarian state, such as the Southeastern Conference, the Striped Ones would have eluded us entirely. They would have left their locker room and stepped into a curtained rickshaw, to be whisked away by nubian slaves.
That, at least, was how it seemed after the 1998 Rose Bowl, the last time Cougars were crying foul from every hilltop in the Palouse.
This time the scene was right out of Joseph Heller, which is to say comically bureaucratic. One by one, the officials walked out the door of their locker room, waving off reporters and saying their spokesman would make a statement.
Oh, OK. This spokesman must have been right on the scene. He can tell us exactly what happened.
Then the spokesman came out and the first thing out of his hoarse throat was, "All I can tell you is I was 50 yards away, watching the quarterback. All I see is the touchdown signal.''
Of course. The officials who had seen the play were, by that time, safely in their Oldsmobiles on Stadium Way. At the time, it seemed as if they had plotted the perfect getaway. Who needs nubian slaves when you have good old American buck-passing?
Actually, though, that's the Pac-10 officials' standard procedure. When the media want a postgame comment from them, the official known as the "referee'' speaks for the whole seven-man group.
It's just not a very good policy.
We still don't know why field judge Jerry Gastellum raised his arms to indicate a touchdown Saturday, giving Arizona a Hail Mary reception and a 30-24 win over Washington State. Surely Gastellum's view had been blocked by Bobby Wade's body as the Arizona receiver was falling to the turf and groping for the handle of the ball. Cougar coach Mike Price conjectured, "He's got Superman X-ray vision to look through people.''
We also don't know why back judge Bob Wucetich, whose view should have been better than Gastellum's, seemed to take his cue from the other official, waiting a moment and then echoing the TD signal.
Did Wucetich believe the ball had been firmly cradled in Wade's left arm before the ground jarred it loose? Did someone step in front of the official and obscure his view at the critical moment? Nobody knows. But no one except Wade seemed willing to declare it a good call.
Price didn't equivocate Sunday after watching the video: "The ball went right through his hands and hit the ground. The official didn't see it.'' He tantalizingly said, "there's more to the story,'' but wouldn't elaborate.
A nice, clear statement from the officials who saw the play might have warded off the speculation that's inevitable in these cases. After the game, somebody from WSU noted that the referee who spoke to us was from Phoenix. Then somebody pointed out that one of the key judges on the play had been raised in Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, though he hadn't lived there for four decades. Had be been struck with a moment of schoolboy bias?
It's true that the Pac-10 doesn't deem it necessary to separate officials from assignments that involve alma maters or hometowns. But it's also true that a Hail Mary pass in a crowded end zone is a notoriously difficult thing to officiate. There was a similar Pac-10 case several years ago in which two officials swore the ball was cleanly caught, but admitted after seeing the video that it had struck the ground.
To tell you the truth, this furor over a blown call was probably what the Cougars needed -- barring a victory, of course, and a victory seems almost an outlandish notion at this point.
They needed a scapegoat. After 12 straight losses, they are tired of derision, tired of criticism, tired of "being held accountable.'' Not only are they are weary of explaining their own dropped passes, their own missed tackles, but some of them are weary of tacitly taking the rap for others' mistakes.
If Wade would have caught the ball legitimately, or if officials had disallowed the catch and Arizona had won in overtime, Cougar fans would be taking up the old chorus: Yeah, they played better this time, but I've seen better tacklers in a wax museum. I've seen softer hands on the Venus de Milo.
As it is, the Cougars can blame the officials and take heart in the fact that, yes, they did play better this time. Their inveterate flaw, that onset of passive acceptance that had marked their first three losses, didn't arrive this time until the final play, when defensive backs froze for a split-second when the Hail Mary was hailing toward them.
And why indeed should the Cougars be publicly "held accountable''? To them, it probably seems as if no one else is.

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

QB Gesser will miss next game; WSU freshman won't play against Cal because of injury

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Jason Gesser, the Washington State freshman who directed two fourth-quarter touchdown drives Saturday, will miss the Cougars' game this week with a sprained thumb on his throwing hand, Cougars coach Mike Price said Sunday.
Also, leading receiver Leaford Hackett is listed as doubtful with a sprained shoulder.
The seriousness of Gesser's injury isn't yet known. It involves a small bone chip, which may indicate a torn ligament.
That means Paul Mencke, who this season has concentrated on his new role as a reserve wide receiver, will move up to the No. 2 quarterback spot behind Steve Birnbaum.
Gesser injured the thumb late in the third quarter of the Cougars' 30-24 loss to Arizona. He was trying unsuccessfully to scramble for a first down in a fourth-and-10 situation when he was pushed out of bounds. He played the rest of the game, though "I could hardly hold the ball -- it was bad,'' he said.
Birnbaum, too, is battered, but should be ready to start Saturday in a home game against California. The senior had given way to Gesser after a groin injury had affected his mobility in the third quarter of the Arizona game.
True freshman Matt Kegel may get repetitions in practice this week, but the Cougars would like to avoid squandering his redshirt season.
Hackett, who has caught 83 passes in the Cougars' last 15 outings, may miss a game for only the second time in his football career -- at any level. His replacement in the starting lineup would probably be Nian Taylor or true freshman Collin Henderson.
Also doubtful is running back Jeremy Thielbahr, with a bruised hip, and offensive lineman Ryan Raymond, with a bruised calf.
That's five significant injuries from the Arizona game, all on offense.
The defense is healthier. Jesse Ratcliff returned from his sore back, joining newcomer Anthony Adedipe in bolstering the rotation at defensive line. Price said defensive end Austin Matson may have submitted his best performance in a WSU uniform, and safety Billy Newman continued his strong play, getting 15 tackles and, counting special-team roles, participating in 105 plays.

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

Gesser's season over; Mencke moves up on WSU depth chart as former No. 2 QB undergoes thumb surgery

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Seems like old times: Birnbaum and Mencke.
That's how Washington State's depth chart at quarterback reads now that second-string Jason Gesser is out for the season.
The second-year freshman underwent surgery Tuesday, after it was learned that his sprained thumb was actually a torn ligament.
So Paul Mencke, who started three games in 1998, will move up to the No. 2 quarterback spot while the Cougars pare down his wide-receiver duties. He might see action at both positions when the Cougars play host to California on Saturday.
The starting quarterback is still Steve Birnbaum, though the Cougars are a bit concerned about his groin injury, which affected his mobility last week in the 30-24 loss to Arizona.
Redshirting Gesser isn't an option, because he has appeared in too many games. So he will return as a sophomore next year.
"It's a huge loss for Jason Gesser -- we're really disappointed this happened to him,'' coach Mike Price said. "But he's young. I think he did a wonderful job Saturday. We would not have been as close as we were, if it weren't for the job he did.''
Gesser directed two fourth-quarter touchdown drives against Arizona, despite the inflamed thumb. He had sustained the injury when breaking his fall on a scramble on his first series.
Matt Kegel, the true freshman from Montana, will move to the No. 3 role at quarterback, which means he will practice with the active players rather than the scout team. The Cougars still want to avoid removing his red shirt if possible.
Price said Billy Graffis, a former scout-team quarterback who had reliniquished football for baseball, contacted the coach Monday when he heard of Gesser's injury and volunteered to return to the Cougars to direct the scout-team offense. Price will take him up on that.
One reason Kegel is now listed No. 3 is that freshman quarterback Kjell Nesen injured a knee three weeks ago and will be sidelined another three weeks.
In other personnel matters, slotback Leaford Hackett is still doubtful for Saturday with a shoulder sprain (though he said he will play), and Mike Schwarz will probably start at right guard in place of Ryan Raymond, who is nursing a calf strain.
Running back Jeremy Thielbahr has evidently recovered from a bruised hip.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Hail no!; WSU loses on final play; Controversial call on final play of game gives Arizona a 30-24 win over Cougars

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Fans and publicists from Washington State said the ball hit the ground. No doubt. No gray area. They spoke in black and white terms but, alas, they were not wearing black and white stripes. Their opinion doesn't count.
Those who do wear the stripes said Bobby Wade caught the ball cleanly, and that's the way it will be recorded: Arizona 30, Washington State 24, on a Hail Mary pass with no time on the clock.
How many ways are there to lose a football game? The Cougars seem to be exploring all of them, and Saturday's version, for their school-record 12th straight defeat, was the most sudden, the most controversial, the most conducive to a sense of ... persecution? Futility? Voodoo?
With the score tied 24-24 with five seconds left in this wind-blown Pac-10 game at Martin Stadium, Arizona quarterback Keith Smith heaved a desperation 42-yard pass to the left side of the end zone, where a crowd of players from both teams, not quite as frenziedly as you would imagine, leaped and lurched and leaned and reached for it.
The ball landed in the grasp of a falling Wade, Arizona's true freshman wide receiver, and after a moment's hesitation, two officials -- field judge Jerry Gastellum and, a moment later, back judge Bob Wucetich -- raised their arms to indicate touchdown.
On the official statistics package, Washington State publicists typed, "TV replay indicates winning touchdown pass hit the ground before Wade picked it up." In the press box, the replay elicited a chorus of groans from Washington State fans.
Some observers found the replay more ambiguous. In any case, the ball did appear to touch the ground as Wade, falling on his left side (perhaps shielding Gastellum's view), cradled it with his left arm. It didn't appear that he had firm possession until he lay on the turf.
Further confusing the issue, the official who was assigned to address reporters hadn't clearly seen the play, and he relayed information that contradicted Wade's remarks.
"I was 50 yards away, watching the quarterback," referee Pat Flood said. "Our officials ruled a touchdown. Two of them saw the receiver catch the ball."
Were they in position to make the call?
"I'm sure they were. But you guys had the TV. There was no doubt (in the two officials' minds. They) looked at each other and both ruled a touchdown. The pass was tipped by No. 16, and (Wade) caught it while he was on his back in the end zone. Those were the facts that were given to us."
The No. 16 he mentioned was Ortege Jenkins, the Arizona quarterback who occasionally plays receiver. He was indeed in the end zone on the play, but Wade indicated the ball had never been tipped.
"It was just a perfect pass by Keith, first of all," Wade said. "The ball came through perfectly. All I know is I thought I caught the ball. To me, it was definitely a catch."
Torry Hollimon, a Cougar defensive back on the play (along with Lamont Thompson, Marcus Trufant and Billy Newman), said the ball appeared to bounce.
"I came flying over there to try to throw up my hands and hit somebody," he said. "I could have sworn.... I don't know if I want to believe my lyin' eyes or the referee, but I could have sworn the ball bounced off the ground. The fellow who caught the ball -- you could tell. He was so late throwing the ball up in the air, like he'd caught it."
What Thompson noticed was the hesitation in the officials' judgment.
"I kind of knew that it wasn't a touchdown because the referee didn't see it, and he looked over at the other referee and then put his hands up," Thompson said.
But it's settled. The Cougars are 0-4 overall, 0-2 in the Pac-10, and in losing for the 12th straight time over two seasons, they have outdone their 1970-71 forebears for the longest stretch of futility in school history.
They played with better purpose and better heart than in previous games, erasing a late 24-17 deficit, but they were undone by clutch performances by Smith, who came off the bench to pass for 190 yards and rush for 64, and Dennis Northcutt, who rang up 107 reception yards and sprang a critical 68-yard punt return in the third quarter. Arizona is 1-1 and 3-2.
The Cougars planted seeds of hope for their future, getting a second-half jolt from freshman quarterback Jason Gesser and a 55-yard touchdown run from freshman running back Deon Burnett to tie the score at 24-24 with 4:14 left.
But Washington State, despite moments of defensive improvement, again proved vulnerable to a ground attack, giving up 158 yards to Trung Canidate and 249 ground yards as a whole.
The Cougars committed no official turnovers, but their unofficial one was a doozy -- an unforced fumble by Burnett that quarterback Steve Birnbaum recovered in the end zone for an Arizona safety. That pulled the Wildcats to within 10-9 in the third quarter, gave Birnbaum a groin injury that eventually sent him to the bench, and sparked a shift in momentum that saw the Wildcats take a 17-10 lead later in the period.
"Our players have worked so hard," WSU coach Mike Price said. "They deserved to win this game, or at least a chance to win it on the field."
If that was an allusion to the final call, it was Price's only one. Both he and Arizona coach Dick Tomey said they didn't have a good view of the play.
Thompson said the loss "was just devastating for this team and for the coaching staff. I mean, they put together a great scheme to stop (Arizona's) offense."
After the decisive touchdown, Arizona players mobbed Wade in the end zone while Hollimon watched the scoreboard in vain for a replay.
"I was looking to see what happened on the replay board ... the screen went blank," he Cougar safety said. "I started walking off the field. I was like, 'It's not true. It can't be true.' But when those hands are up in the air and there's zero seconds left on the clock, it's true. It's as true as it gets."

Arizona 7 0 10 13--30
Washington St. 0 10 0 14--24
First Quarter
ARI--Canidate 1 run (McDonald kick), 6:20.
Second Quarter
WSU--Zubedi 11 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 11:31.
WSU--FG Lindell 52, 2:46.
Third Quarter
ARI--Safety, Birnbaum tackled in end zone, 11:20
ARI--Canidate 2 run (Smith pass to Manumaleuna), 5:24.
Fourth Quarter
WSU--Burnett 2 run (Lindell kick), 10:15.
ARI--Canidate 4 run (McDonald kick), 4:39.
n WSU--Burnett 55 run (Lindell kick), 4:14.
ARI--Wade 42 pass from Smith, 00:00.
A--26,787.
ARI WSU
First downs 25 a a 13
Rushes-yards 60-249 a30-153
Passing a251 a a 165
Comp-Att-Int18-33-0 15-24-0
Return Yards a 100 a a 34
Punts-Avg. 5-37 a 6-41
Fumbles-Lost a 0-0 a 2-0
Penalties-Yards 8-52 a 8-45
Time of Possession 38:26 a 21:34
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Arizona, Canidate 34-158, Smith 13-54, Briggs 6-21, Northcutt 1-15, Callen 3-7, Jenkins 3-minus 6. Washington State, Burnett 13-96, Gesser 6-45, Hawkins 7-16, Birnbaum 1-(minus 1), Thielbahr 3-(minus 3).
PASSING--Arizona, Smith 12-25-0-190, Jenkins 6-8-0-61. Washington State, Birnbaum 12-19-0-112, Gesser 3-5-0-53.
RECEIVING--Arizona, Northcutt 5-107, Wade 5-100, Canidate 4-16, Leonard 2-18, Manumaleuna 1-8, Callen 1-2. Washington State, Hackett 7-97, Zubedi 3-35, Thielbahr 2-10, Burnett 1-10, Williams 1-7, Taylor 1-6.

Friday, October 1, 1999

And what a strange trip it's been; Former Cougar offers candid view of his successful though dysfunctional prep career in 'Lessons of the Game'

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Derek Sparks' football career at Washington State in the early 1990s appeared so placid, so uneventful, that it scarcely prepares one for "Lessons of the Game,'' his autobiographical account of his tumultuous prep career in southern California.
Under-the-table payments, grade-doctoring, a Scholastic Aptitude Test fraud, an adoption scam -- all these are depicted in a scrapbookish 231-page paperback published this month by a small firm in California called Game Time.
Sparks, 26, now a motivational speaker based in Seattle and California, will make appearances this weekend at the Washington State bookstore, in connection with the Cougars' Homecoming game Saturday against California. He will be on hand for a reading and book-signings from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today, and for signings from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.
Sparks' career as a WSU running back was quietly disappointing. Racked by injuries, he was forced to call it quits midway through his senior season in 1995. He seemed mild-mannered and well-spoken, but he never accomplished enough on the field to attract much media attention here. He finished with five career touchdowns -- a typical one-game total in his prep days.
Yet, in light of the events outlined in this book, Washington State must have seemed a refuge to him.
Shortly after his college career had ended, ESPN aired a mini-documentary on his high-school odyssey -- four schools in four years, well-publicized family squabbles, repeated scandals. It may have reinforced Sparks' image in the Los Angeles area as a capricious jock, a symbol of his generation's warped values.
"Lessons of the Game,'' on the other hand, suggests a perceptive but naive teen-ager from a single-parent home who is manipulated by ambitious relatives, coaches and administrators bent on exploiting his athletic talent. Sparks doesn't deny an awareness of his misdeeds -- for example, when he allows an impostor to take his SAT for him -- but he emphasizes the naivet‚ that allows him to believe everything is OK: This is how the world operates.
The most outlandish events in his story involve a private, sports-crazed school in the San Gabriel Valley to which Sparks has assigned the fictitious name Valley Prep. It's housed in a converted Motel 6, with prostitutes loitering near the doorway.
Not surprisingly, Sparks' book is being pitched as a television movie, and he says HarperCollins has expressed interest in publishing a hardback edition.
The book suggests that, in urban areas, corruption is far more prevalent in high-school sports than on the college level. It seems, in fact, a pathetic imitation of college shenanigans, a corruption that extends well beyond the walls of the schools.
At one point, coaches arrange for Sparks to move in with the family of a teammate. Then the boy opens a newspaper and reads with amazement that he had been adopted after being arrested as an "abandoned child.'' It seems that a juvenile-corrections official and "friend of the program'' had written a phony arrest report, allowing coaches to wrest Sparks from a meddlesome uncle.
Embittered by these experiences, and aided by a writer with Hollywood ties named Stuart K. Robinson, who is listed as co-author, Sparks composed the first draft of his book as a senior at Washington State.
"Back then, I was writing it to get back at people,'' Sparks said this week. "But over the years, especially after I graduated from college, I got a chance to understand why those things happened to me. I went on a soul-seeking journey -- what is my life really about? My name won't be in the lights on some football field anymore. What is my purpose?''
The book still has the feel of a preliminary draft, illustrated with boyhood snapshots and capped by an afterword by a pastor. Sparks occasionally departs from the strict autobiographical form, rendering conversations that are evidently pieced together second-hand. He has assigned pseudonyms to several figures, and said he isn't worried about legal recriminations. "I don't fear any man,'' he said. "People file lawsuits every day. Especially in California.''
He said the book is intended less as an indictment than as a warning to athletes and their parents about the hazards of athletic adulation. The system conspires to undermine an athlete's education and, even if he beats the odds and rises to the professional level, distorts his sense of reality. As an example he mentions Ryan Leaf, the trouble-prone former Washington State quarterback.
"It's no accident that Ryan Leaf is dealing with the things he's dealing with,'' Sparks said. "And I love him to death. I've seen people treat Ryan as, 'You're special, Ryan. You're this, you're that. You can't do any wrong.' And it has hurt him. It's a shame no one could see it.''
In his speaking tours, "I've talked to 5,000 students this year, in various schools in Washington, and 90 percent of these kids just know they're going to be flying through the sky like (Michael Jordan),'' he said. "They're going to be a pro. And they don't care anyone says. It's really disturbing.''
Even more disturbing, though, is how adults buy into the same dream. The most puzzling figure in Sparks' book is his legal guardian, his "Uncle Jay,'' who orchestrates the boy's transfers, allows him to live in an apartment on his own, badgers his coaches and, as the coup de grace, arranges a contract that would give him and a booster a 10-percent cut of his nephew's future NFL salary.
Yet the boy, abandoned by own father, never seems to lose his affection for this dubious surrogate.
He still hasn't. Sparks said he wrote the book partly to begin a "healing process'' for him and his family. He wants his uncle to own up to his indiscretions and "let's get on with life.''
Meanwhile, he has a message for everyone else's Uncle Jay.
COUGAR NOTES -- Milton Wynn, the transfer receiver who broke a finger two weeks ago, may be lost for the season because of the injury, coach Mike Price said Thursday. He was originally expected to be sidelined for two weeks. Since he appeared in only one game, he should be able to retain his junior status for next season. ... True freshman Marcus Trufant will start at cornerback for the game at 1 p.m. Saturday against California. He replaces slump-ridden Lamont Thompson.

Saturday, October 2, 1999

Cougs, Cal take frosh approach; Freshmen assuming significant responsibilities for two teams in dire need of different perspective

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- If they shave, they shimmy. If they vote, they'll float. That seems to be the ethos in college football at the moment, as illustrated by today's Homecoming game between Washington State and California.
Six true freshmen and four-redshirt freshmen might be in the starting lineups at 1 p.m. at Martin Stadium as these underwhelming teams look for fresh blood and unjaded spirit.
On California passing plays, you might see a true freshman quarterback throwing to a true freshman slotback, covered by a true freshman cornerback.
If it resembles high-school football at times, don't say you weren't warned.
"I don't know if it's a trend, but it kind of seems like it is,'' said Washington State coach Mike Price. "Five years ago, this was almost unheard of.''
If the conventional wisdom is to bankroll and nurture your rookies with immediate redshirt seasons, the reality of college football in the 1990s -- lowered scholarship limits, a widening exodus of underclassmen for the NFL -- is encouraging teams to throw their freshmen into the frying pan.
That's especially true for teams like California, which has watched its offense languish in recent years, and Washington State, careening on a school-record 12-game losing streak.
For Cal, the true freshman starters are quarterback Kyle Boller, slotback Joe Igber, place-kicker Jeremy Hershey and possibly offensive guard Scott Tercero.
One of the brightest lights on dingy Cougar Street is Deon Burnett, the true freshman running back who busted a 55-yard touchdown run last week.
The trick is getting him to move in the right direction. Earlier in that loss to Arizona, he suddenly cut backward at the line of scrimmage, and the ball flew out of his hands, resulting in an Arizona safety. If not for his 34 yards of negative gains this season, he would be averaging 6 yards per carry. Still, he's making progress.
"He was doing a great job in the first three games of finding the hole at the line of scrimmage,'' Price said. "Then once he got ... to the linebackers and the secondary, I didn't like what he was doing. He was jitterbugging in there too much. This week, he exploded once he found the hole.''
The next lamb to be sacrificed is Marcus Trufant, WSU's true freshman cornerback. He will make his first start today, thanks to the misadventures of junior Lamont Thompson, himself a former freshman prodigy who has seemed lost since being moved from safety to cornerback.
Trufant "is catching on fast,'' Price said. "By the time he leaves, he's going to be a spectacular defensive back for us. But he is playing cornerback. If he does make a mistake, you're going to know about it. If he were playing left guard, you might not know about it.''
Speaking of left guard, veteran Ryan Tujague will move there from tackle, to make room for redshirt freshman Phil Locker. On defense, a senior with an ailing back, Jesse Ratcliff, will start at end. On both lines, the Cougars are trying to reduce their penalties and increase their emotional fire -- a tricky line to walk.
"We need guys who are hungry and aggressive and will dive and fight,'' Price said, "and we're not getting it from some of these guys on defense.''
With Leaford Hackett still doubtful with a shoulder sprain, and Milton Wynn still out with a broken finger, the Cougars will usher slumping senior Nian Taylor back into the starting lineup at flanker, hoping he keeps his eye on the football this time.
If he doesn't, true freshman Collin Henderson is there and waiting.
Expect mistakes. By turning to an increasingly young lineup, the Cougars and Bears seem to be saying they can live with mistakes, as long as they're being made by talented players who haven't grown callous to losing.

Sunday, October 3, 1999

Steve Hanks

Washington State linebacker Raonall Smith drops California's Kyle Boller on a quarterback keeper. WSU coach Mike Price and defensive lineman Gerry Cook celebrate the end of the longest losing streak in Cougar football history

At last! Cougs break into song; WSU in good voice after putting emphatic end to 12-game skid

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- They remembered how to celebrate. They remembered how to do funky dances in the end zone. They remembered how to sing the school fight song with the marching band, though someone had thrown them a curve by moving the band this season from the northwest corner of the stadium to the southwest.
Eventually Jesse Ratcliff sniffed out the horn section.
"Cougs! C'mon!"
The horde followed him, and the Washington State Cougars sang their fight song for the first time since September 1998, and for the first time with any real feeling since their 1997 Apple Cup victory.
In defeating California 31-7 Saturday in their Homecoming game at Martin Stadium, they shucked their 12-game losing streak so decisively that you wondered what had taken them so long. Not even the 1997 Rose Bowl team, which could afford to rely on bounteous talent, ever crafted such a plodding and conscientious performance.
For the defense, it was a shutout: Cal's only points came on a fumble return.
For the offense, it was a triumph of persistence: the embattled Steve Birnbaum throwing repeatedly to the embattled Nian Taylor, with rookie Deon Burnett seeking running room against a big, powerful defensive line.
For the special teams, it was bliss: a blocked punt to set up a touchdown, a fumble recovery on kickoff coverage to set up a field goal.
For players and coaches in general, it was long-delayed assurance that maybe they had been barking up the right tree these last 12 months.
Birnbaum, prefacing his best performance in two seasons (23-for-38 for 227 yards, two TDs, no interceptions), established the theme with a speech Friday night, saying that the program's burgeoning material wealth -- the new weight room, the planned practice facility -- would eventually help turn the Cougars into a ... well, teammates said he might have used the term "powerhouse."
"That was weird, coming from Steve -- he's not like a futuristic person; he doesn't like to talk about the future," said cornerback LeJuan Gibbons, who made an off-balance interception in the second quarter and scarcely gave up a catch all day. "To hear him say that was inspirational to a lot of us."
In a word, Birnbaum said he was plugging "faith," but that doesn't mean the payoff wasn't surprising.
"I'm almost in shock -- I'm probably going to sit down on a bench and cry," the quarterback said. "I mean, it's not that bad. But this is my first Pac-10 victory."
Missing top receiver Leaford Hackett to a shoulder sprain, and losing middle linebacker Curtis Holden to a broken hand on the second play of the game, the Cougars (1-2, 1-4) proved they have some depth after all.
Taylor, maligned for his drops, caught nine passes. Marcus Williams snagged a comely 10-yard TD pass from Birnbaum to settle the issue at 24-7 early in the fourth quarter.
Grady Emmerson, who might weigh 200 pounds after Thanksgiving dinner, manned Holden's middle-linebacker spot. The scraggly defensive line received a shining second-half performance from Austin Matson, who finished with six tackles and two sacks.
"This is such a sense of relief," Matson said. "We've known we could do this the whole time."
They said as much, too -- all season. But this time it was more convincing.
"You could see it in their eyes," safety Billy Newman said. "They were sick of (the losing streak)."
California, 1-1 and 2-2, made things easier for WSU by playing uninspired offense, with true freshman quarterback Kyle Boller looking a bit panicky while passing 13-for-33 with four sacks. Losing in Pullman for the ninth straight time since 1979, Cal players questioned the team's heart while coach Tom Holmoe talked about "big plays."
"It's a hard loss for us," Holmoe said. "We knew going into this game ... I mean, they almost beat Arizona last week. We didn't go into this game thinking that Washington State is a joke. ... They outplayed us."
The two special-team blowouts in the second quarter were key. Kicking short to keep the ball away from Deltha O'Neal, the Cougs watched Cal's Fa'auve Fa'auve fumble the reception, and Jeremy Thielbahr recovered on the California 30 to set up Rian Lindell's 40-yard field goal.
Then Mory Banks blocked a punt, with Wendell Smith recovering, to set up Birnbaum's quarterback sneak for a 17-0 lead.
The Cougars had also scored on a strangely easy 18-yard pass to freshman Collin Henderson early in the second period.
When the Bears pulled to within 17-7 on Jacob Waasdorp's sack and 25-yard fumble return in the third period, the Washington State defense went from effective to dominant, forcing Cal to punt on five straight possessions.
"I feel no pain right now," Newman said, "and you're talking to the walking wounded. We're on top of the world right now."

California 0 0 7 0-- 7
Washington St. 0 17 0 14--31
Second Quarter
WSU--Henderson 18 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 9:45.
WSU--FG Lindell 40, 9:17.
WSU--Birnbaum 1 run (Lindell kick), 6:15.
Third Quarter
CAL--Waasdorp 25 fumble return (Hershey kick), 13:44.
Fourth Quarter
WSU--Williams 10 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 9:32.
WSU--Burnett 24 run (Lindell kick), 2:33.
A--27,682.
CAL WSU
First downs aa13 a a 21
Rushes-yards 35-58 a 41-95
Passing a116 a a 227
Comp-Att-Int13-33-1 23-38-0
Return Yards a 137 a a 72
Punts-Avg. 9-39.2 a8-40.1
Fumbles-Lost a 2-2 a 1-1
Penalties-Yards a7-60 a13-125
Time of Possession 28:38 a 31:22
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Cal, Fields 17-56, Igber 3-11, Muhammad 3-5, Ainsworth 1-minus 4, Boller 11-minus 10. WSU, Burnett 25-104, Hawkins 2-19, Thielbahr 4-6, Mencke 2-4, Philley 1-0, Birnbaum 7-minus 38.
PASSING--Cal, Boller 13-33-1-116. WSU, Birnbaum 23-38-0-227.
RECEIVING--Cal, Igber 4-15, Pipersburg 4-12, Ainsworth 2-25, Ward 1-43, Surgener 1-16, Young 1-5. WSU, Taylor 9-77, Williams 5-64, Henderson 2-30, Zubedi 2-17, Scott 2-12, Philley 1-27, Mizin 1-6, Burnett 1-minus 6.

Sunday, October 3, 1999

WSU 31, California 7
Quick fact

The Cougars' 12-game losing streak began and ended with the same team. California beat WSU 24-14 in Berkeley on Sept. 26, 1998, to initiate the Cougs' long drought.

Key plays

Early in the second quarter, the Bears fail to cover true freshman slotback Collin Henderson, who catches a short Steve Birnbaum pass and scampers 18 yards for the game's first score.
On the ensuing pop kick, Fa'avae Fa'avae fumbles the reception and WSU's Jeremy Thielbahr recovers. That leads to a 40-yard field goal by Rian Lindell.
The Cougars, who had come close to blocking a Nick Harris punt earlier in the game (getting a roughing penalty instead), are wildly successful this time, with Mory Banks making the block and Wendell Smith recovering on the Cal 11-yard line. Birnbaum scores from the 1 to make it 17-0.
Brad Philley makes a comeback catch and nimbly stays in bounds for a 27-yard gain, fueling a 96-yard WSU drive that results in Birnbaum's 10-yard TD pass to Marcus Williams.
WSU's next game
The Cougars take a break from their Pac-10 schedule to play host to Louisiana Lafayette at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Sunday, October 3, 1999

Cougars still doing things methodically

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Theoretically, Washington State employs a "big-play" offense, relinquishing long, powerful drives in favor of occasional deadly surprises.
During its 12-game losing streak, the main problem with the Cougars' big-play offense was that it hardly ever produced big plays.
Saturday, it still didn't.
For once, though, the Cougars did damage in steady increments, mounting a 12-play touchdown drive in the first quarter and a 96-yard, 16-play wonder in the second half.
The latter drive, which virtually sealed their 31-7 victory over California, whittled 5 minutes 43 seconds off the clock and kept the Cougars' defense off the field at a pivotal time.
The drive featured cameo appearances by Brad Philley, a linebacker-turned-tailback who put receivers to shame with a sweet sideline snag for a 27-yard gain, and Paul Mencke, who spelled quarterback Steve Birnbaum expressly to run a QB draw, which gained 7 yards to the California 10-yard line.
Then, on third-and-3, Birnbaum returned to hit Marcus Williams on a well-timed curl for a TD.
One possible reason for these sustained drives: The Cougars gave their practices an extra touch of reality last week by pitting the No. 1 offense against the No. 1 defense.
REPORTER ARRESTED -- Angelo Bruscas, the WSU beat reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault after a postgame quarrel between reporters and security guards.
The incident began when a security guard denied reporters access to the Bohler Gym addition, which houses the interview room as well as a foyer where the Cougars hold postgame meetings. Reporters and WSU publicists entered the building anyway, climbing a back stairwell that sidesteps the foyer and leads to the interview room. A few moments later, outside the interview room, another security guard tried unsuccessfully to prevent Bruscas from walking past her to get to a nearby rest room. Campus police were summoned, and Bruscas was arrested upon leaving the rest room. He was released later that evening.
Evidently, security guards had been told to keep reporters out of the building for 10 minutes after the players had entered. But coach Mike Price said he had not issued such instructions.
Later in the evening, a WSU publicist was also arrested in connection with the incident.
SACK TIME -- In committing only one turnover, the Cougars lent their usual pizzazz to it.
When a guard pulled when he should have stayed home, California nose tackle Jacob Waasdorp burst through and emphatically sacked Birnbaum, causing a fumble that Waasdorp snatched and escorted 25 yards for a third-quarter touchdown. The Cougar culprit was evidently veteran Ryan Tujague, who had been moved from tackle to guard for this game.
QUICK RECOVERY -- When WSU middle linebacker Curtis Holden left with a broken hand on the second play of the game, Cal running back Marcus Fields looked as if he would have a field day, gaining 22 yards on the Bears' first possession.
But the scoring threat ended when freshman quarterback Kyle Boller botched a handoff and the Cougars' Tomasi Kongaika recovered on the WSU 15.
With Grady Emmerson and Tupo Tuupo filling in for Holden, the Cougar front seven recovered quickly and thoroughly, allowing only 58 ground yards for the day.
Weakside linebacker Steve Gleason wound up with nine tackles, including two for losses, and Raonall Smith played well on the strong side before leaving with a bruised shoulder in the second half.
Tight end Russell Mizin also bruised a shoulder.
ETC. -- True freshman Marcus Trufant held up fine in his first career start at cornerback, and the veteran he replaced, Lamont Thompson, played solidly as a nickel back. ... Nian Taylor again dropped a deep pass, but he was well-defended this time and he immediately redeemed himself by catching four balls in the same drive, which produced WSU's first touchdown. ... Freshman running back Deon Burnett found scant elbow room against Cal's rugged defensive line until the Cougars' second-to-last series, when he broke runs of 20 and 24 yards, scoring on the latter. He finished with a career-high 104 yards.

Monday, October 4, 1999

Mike Price and his win-famished players celebrate the Cougars' breakthrough. The monkey they had shouldered for a fiscal year consisted of 12 marks in the L column -- and something else

So long to the 12-headed monkey; After a year of trials, Cougars get nice, big dose of vindication

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Homecoming bonfires.... a runaway victory.... sportswriters being hauled away in handcuffs.
If you're a football player, it doesn't get much better than this.
Not that Washington State players were cheering on the cops as they slapped the cuffs on a Seattle reporter Saturday. The Cougars were too busy celebrating their own jailbreak -- their first victory in 379 days.
But the absurd little incident outside the interview room seemed to fit the theme of vindication that had emerged in the Cougs' 31-7 apprehension of the sluggish California Bears.
It wasn't merely the shadow of 12 straight losses that had been oppressing the Cougars for an entire fiscal year. It was everything.
It was the official who threw his hands up and gave Arizona a bogus winning touchdown the previous week.
It was the Summer of SAT , when five incoming recruits were declared academic washouts.
It was the Curse of O.J., which saw four of the Cougars' five transfers from San Francisco Community College -- alma mater of Mr. Simpson -- gobbled away by theft charges (Kevin Brown), transcript woes (Chris Martin, Jerry Roquemore) and finally a broken hand in the opening moments of the WSU-Cal game (Curtis Holden).
It's the police. For years, the law and the WSU football team have been exasperating each other, and for every legitimate, premeditated Cougar blunder, such as the Kevin Brown fiasco, there has been a moment of miscommunication, a trifling flare of temper, that has been soberly recorded in the police log and interpreted by the public as another sign of a football program run amok.
So now it happened to somebody else. It happened to a reporter who tried to use the can and ended up -- well, in the can.
To backtrack: For the second straight week, for mysterious reasons, a security guard tried to prevent reporters and publicists from entering the Bohler Gym addition after the game to set up equipment in the interview room, as we've always done. We entered the building anyway. Somebody made a crack about storming the Bastille and Berkeley student riots. But, no, causes aren't what they used to be. At least this one wasn't.
In the interview room, all seemed kosher until a Seattle reporter stepped into the hallway, where a second security guard tried unsuccessfully to prevent him from entering the men's room a few steps away. Police were summoned.
Now, we're all aware of the dangers of a sportswriter entering a bathroom. He might scrawl some devastating graffiti. He might leave a cloud of unhealthful cigar smoke. He might plug up the toilet.
Still, the guard could have let him slide, just this once. Heaven knows our reputations are too far gone to be sullied by fourth-degree assault charges. But jail cells generally don't contain the sort of modems we need to send our stories.
The incident hints at parallels between athlete and reporter that perhaps neither faction would prefer to acknowledge, and suggests a fundamental tension between the seeming informality of a small college town, the millennial anxieties that beset law enforcement these days, and the exigencies of contemporary life. We must win football games. We must make deadline. We must heed the call of nature.
To the Cougars, of course, their only real peer on this day was California, a fellow sufferer, a fellow self-doubter, and they outsmarted and outlasted the Bears so decisively that they might be the happiest 1-4 team in America.
For the moment at least, they can tie up all their recent miseries and dismiss them as growing pains. Wasn't that Steve Birnbaum's message in a pep talk Friday night? The blessings from the 1997 Rose Bowl season are detained but not arrested.
The Cougar dream is under construction, literally. Eventually the team's material circumstances will be much posher. But at the moment, in some ways, they're worse than ever. While Bohler Gym is being renovated and the presumed practice facility is being blueprinted, players suit up in the humble New Gym locker room and trundle to the moldering fieldhouse every day to pick up their equipment. They hold postgame meetings in the foyer of the Bohler addition, which was evidently why security guards in the building have been so uptight with the media the past two weeks.
Have faith, Birnbaum said, and the Cougars bought it. Now they will try to negotiate the long, steep road back to dreamland.
We reporters are made of baser stuff. To paraphrase the Beastie Boys, we're gonna fight for our right to potty.
COUGAR NOTES -- Numerous players suffered minor injuries and might miss practice time this week. The offensive-line duo of Reed and Ryan Raymond might miss the Cougs' home game at 1 p.m. Saturday against Louisiana Lafayette, and linebacker Curtis Holden is sidelined for at least a week with his broken hand. Among the battered are three starting defensive backs: LeJuan Gibbons (shoulder), Billy Newman (knee) and Earl Riley (toe, ankle). And the fourth starter in the secondary, Marcus Trufant, is expected to miss practice until Thursday to attend a grandmother's funeral.

Friday, October 8, 1999

New name doesn't help Cajuns forget about '97 trip to Pullman

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Of course, your first question will be: Who or what is Louisiana Lafayette? Didn't he play in the Super Bowl a few years ago? Or was it the American Revolution?
Actually, the party in question played in a godawful football game at Washington State in November 1997, under the name of Southwestern Louisiana. Returning with an alias and some bad telltale statistics, the Ragin' Cajuns on Saturday face the school that spanked them 77-7 as a side jaunt in their march to the Rose Bowl.
Not that the Cougars are favored by 70 points this time. More like 20. They can live with that.
In addition to the state-legislated name change last month, Louisiana Lafayette has also switched bosses this year, replacing 13-year coach Nelson Stokley with a defensive assistant from LSU, Jerry Baldwin.
One could say defense is now their strength: They rank 112th in the country in that category, as opposed to 114th, or dead-last, in offense.
Deon Burnett's freshman eyes probably lit up when he saw Lafayette's defensive stats from last week. The WSU freshman will try to take his cue from the Louisiana Tech ground game that produced 322 yards in a 41-31 victory at Lafayette.
Those numbers might be misleading, according to Cajuns nose guard Eugene Chambers.
"A guy had an 80-yard run and a 60-yard run, where we had people out of the gap or misaligned,'' Chambers said. "I think if we had eliminated those big plays, they would have been held to under 100 yard rushing.''
Some of that yardage came against Cajun blitzes, but "it was more missed tackles than blitzes,'' said Baldwin, whose team allowed 13 key points in the fourth quarter.
"Our team played with great effort and great intensity,'' the coach said. "However, we have to learn to finish. We didn't finish well.''
Note also that Louisiana Lafayette's schedule, for an independent school of humble tradition, has been rugged. Their losses have been to Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Louisiana Tech. They defeated Middle Tennessee and bring a 1-4 record to WSU, which is also 1-4.
The Cajuns have vacillated between two quarterbacks, but say they have settled on sophomore Derek Dyer over senior Barton Folse. Washington State coach Mike Price compares Dyer stylistically to Arizona's quick, solid-armed Keith Smith.
Folse is one of several upperclassmen who experienced the 1997 catastrophe here. On film, do the '99 Cougars bear the slightest resemblance to the authors of that rout?
"Actually, they kind of do,'' Chambers diplomatically said. "I look at the offensive linemen, and my opinion is that they're just as good and just as big as anybody we've ever played.''

Saturday, October 9, 1999

Cougars not overly giddy; School-record skid may be history, but WSU still needs to move ahead

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- When Washington State snapped its 12-game losing streak last week, no one savored the moment more animatedly than Mike Price, and no one was more willing to claim a symbolic victory behind the literal one -- a validation of the Cougars' patience through a year of trials.
The next day, though, he evinced his paternal frown.
"I'm just being real demanding on our team,'' the coach said. "We have a young team and sometimes young guys. ... Experience is good for your wisdom. You realize we've won just one game. We really haven't done much.''
Striving for an emotional equilibrium, the Cougars face lowly Louisiana-Lafayette at 1 p.m. today at Martin Stadium in a nonleague throwaway that has acquired an unexpected significance.
Lose this one, and every blessing from last week's 31-7 win over California turns to dust.
"This is a very important game,'' Price said. "We need to do this for our confidence and our character -- actually, for the integrity of the win.''
Despite the team's improvement in so many areas last week, it wasn't difficult for Price to seize upon a flaw. The Cougars committed 13 penalties for 125 yards. That included four holding infractions and three after-the-whistle calls. "It's really got me upset, and players know it,'' Price said.
As Cougar injuries pile up, the starting lineup gets younger, its emotions flightier. Two more freshmen will make starting debuts today: Fred Shavies at middle linebacker and Jason Hughes at offensive tackle.
It seems possible that Louisiana-Lafayette, 1-4, isn't as bad as advertised. None of the Ragin' Cajuns' losses were against terrible teams, and it's always difficult to compare teams from opposite corners of the country -- especially in this, the worst Pac-10 season in memory.
New Mexico State, Brigham Young, Utah, Air Force, Idaho, San Jose State -- all own victories over Pac-10 teams this season.
The Cougars will look for mismatches. For example, they will try to isolate their new 6-foot-5 receiver, Marcus Williams, against Lafayette's 5-9 cornerbacks, Curnell Schumack and Charles Woods.
Failing that, the Cougs can turn to more experienced receivers like slotback Leaford Hackett, returning from a shoulder sprain, or Nian Taylor, who presumably broke out of his slump last week with a nine-catch performance. "It was nice to have Nian back,'' Price said. "I don't know who was there the first (four) games.''
The Cougs are talking about repeating the conservative approach that worked so well against Cal: Take care of the ball, sustain drives, carve out field position with defensive takeaways and special-team explosives.
Perhaps thinking of the 322 ground yards that Louisiana Tech rang up against the Cajuns last week, Price made a statement he rarely makes: "I won't be surprised if we run more than we pass.''
Someone asked if backup quarterback Paul Mencke might see action if the Cougars get a comfortable lead. Befitting the coach of a 1-4 team, Price balked at the mention of "a comfortable lead,'' even in regard to an opponent like Louisiana-Lafayette.
"We're kind of like Wayne's World,'' he said. "We're not worthy of taking them lightly.''

COUGAR NOTES -- The charges that face Angelo Bruscas of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in connection with an incident after the WSU-Cal game, are two-fold: fourth-degree assault and obstruction of a law-enforcement officer, both misdemeanors. They are being filed by Whitman County prosecutors. Washington State spokesmen continue to express confidence the charges would be dropped.

Sunday, October 10, 1999

Cougs didn't need time on their side

Dale Grummert and Bert Sahlberg

PULLMAN -- As the saying goes, there's lies, there's damn lies and there's statistics.
Obviously, stats didn't tell the story to Washington State's 44-0 win over Louisiana-Lafayette at Martin Stadium Saturday.
The Ragin' Cajuns held a 35:49-to-24:11 advantage in time of possession and also had a 20-17 edge in first downs. So why such a lopsided game.
Easy. It didn't take the Cougars long to score.
WSU's six touchdown drives took only 7:49 total and only one took longer than four plays.
The Cougars needed only 2:59 to score their four first-half touchdown as they went 80 yards in four plays, 58 yards and 80 yards in two plays, and 2 yards on one play.
The second half had a four-play 52-yard drive that took only 47 seconds and then WSU's most time-consuming scoring drive, eight plays in 4:03.
The only Ragin' the Cajuns did on offense was between the 30s. They had five drives of 32 or more yards but only made it inside the WSU 35 twice, both times in the first half. Louisiana-Lafayette threw an interception at WSU 11 and then missed a 32-yard field goal wide left.
INTERVIEW BY PROXY -- Deon Burnett couldn't make it to postgame interviews, but he sent his attorney.
"Sorry, guys. ... He's not trying to avoid anybody," said Kasey Dunn, who is actually Burnett's position coach.
Well, Burnett had been trying to avoid Louisiana-Lafayette tacklers, with notable success, but one has to believe Dunn that the postgame scarcity of his freshman running back had more to do with publicity-shyness than a want of courtesy. He was probably off feeding the homeless or something. In previous interviews, Burnett had assured listeners that he will not leave WSU under circumstances resembling Kevin Brown's departure -- i.e. residential-burglary convictions.
Burnett began to make people forget about Brown on Saturday, gaining 152 all-purpose yards and scampering for four touchdowns in Washington State's laugher over Louisiana-Lafayette.
"An absolutely wonderful kid, a joy to be around," said Dunn, who has spoon-fed his true freshman lessons in major-college football this season, after 1998 starter Brown was arrested last spring and eventually transferred to Nevada-Las Vegas.
Where Brown bulls and glides, the smaller Burnett darts and twists. Much of his yardage this time came on spinning second efforts.
"Deon's the real deal," WSU quarterback Steve Birnbaum said. "I think what he has that people don't (realize) is he has real good vision, as far as hitting the hole, or catching (a pass) and looking to see what's going on downfield."
The rookie from southern California finished with 110 ground yards for his second straight 100-plus performance.
"He's been kind of thrust into the position where he's got to respond for us, and he's done it," Dunn said. "Yeah, it's highly unusual (for a freshman). He's done a good job.
"That offensive line is creasing it, too," the running-back coach said. "And it's taking some pressure off, the way we're throwing the football. It spreads us open a little more than it did last year, gives us better opportunity to run."
Later, WSU publicists phoned Burnett at his home to get his response to breaking Rueben Mayes' freshman single-game school rushing record.
"I hadn't even heard about it," he said. "I know how good Rueben Mayes was. He was a great player."
MORE FRESHMEN -- Rookie linebacker Fred Shavies, making his first start, was one of four Cougars to get a sack (along with Rob Meier, Gerald Cook and Austin Matson), while freshman cornerback Marcus Trufant intercepted a bobbled pass in the fourth quarter.
Trufant had returned to Pullman on Wednesday night after attending the funeral of a grandmother, who had died of cancer.
Another first-year Cougar, right tackle Jason Hughes, made a few mistakes in his starting debut but seemed to recover well. The Cougars didn't avoid running his way.
WHERE'S ERNIE BANKS? -- Apparently fans weren't too impressed with Saturday's rare college football doubleheader. At least for the first game.
While WSU listed its attendance at 23,276, the figure included season ticket sales. There was less than 10,000 in the stands for the opening kickoff and around only 15,000 tops at the high point.
For the Idaho game, the attendance was listed at 16,636, and quite a few fans also arrived after kickoff.
Idaho's crowd was more compact as they closed the end-zone seating to allow Idaho to put up sponsorship signs.
With this draw, as well as the sellout crowd for the WSU game earlier this season, it appears Idaho is well on its way to meeting the NCAA Division I-A attendance requirements. The NCAA has strict guidelines so not all of the nearly 50,000 for the two games will count, but more than 40,000 will, leaving UI only needing to draw around 30,000 for its final two home games against Utah State and Boise State.
WHAT ABOUT BOB? -- Bob Curtis enjoyed his 475th UI football as the Voice of the Vandals. How did he celebrate it? By having Bob Robertson, the WSU radio announcer, on as his halftime guest.
It's the first time the two have ever been on the air together. Curtis has been UI's announcer since 1948 while Robertson has been doing WSU games for 33 years.
LOCKER-ROOM SHUFFLE -- The doubleheader posed some challenges in locker-room logistics, especially because WSU is overhauling its facilities anyway.
North Texas suited up in cramped, aging Smith Gym, and while the Eagles' game was in progress their equipment crew hauled their street clothes and other items to the more convenient New Gym locker room.
Idaho suited up in Moscow before busing to Pullman, where it held pregame meetings in the New Gym. The Cougars and their visitors, as usual, used the New Gym locker rooms -- a makeshift routine while Bohler Gym is being renovated.

Sunday, October 17, 1999

WSU rallies to beat Huskies!!!

PULLMAN -- Washington State University freshman LaToya Harris opened the evening by surprising her volleyball teammates with a ...

... Sorry ... just dreaming ... that would be women's volleyball ... not football ... sorry ...

Thursday, October 21, 1999

Which Devils await WSU?; Cougars hope to capitalize on Arizona State's inconsistencies

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Whether they are suffering one of the most puzzling losses in Pac-10 history, or capitalizing on six fumbles against the hottest team in the conference, the Sun Devils of Arizona State manage to look like underachievers.
Surely their 35-7 loss to New Mexico State last month doesn't paint a true picture of the team's talent. But neither does their surprising 28-7 win at Washington last week.
Washington's numerous mistakes were so crucial to the outcome, in fact, that Arizona State coach Bruce Snyder wonders why the game wasn't more lopsided.
"It's not just six turnovers,'' he said. "'There were six fumble recoveries, two fourth-down stops, which are turnovers, and a blocked field goal. As I count it in my book, that's nine takeaways and 28 points. One of our biggest concerns is: Why aren't we getting more points?''
Still, the Devils have evidently improved dramatically since back-to-back losses to New Mexico State and California. They take a 3-3 overall record, 2-1 in league, into their home game against Washington State at 4 p.m. Saturday.
"The team that showed up against Washington wasn't the team that showed up against New Mexico State,'' said Cougars coach Mike Price. "... I've got a feeling I know what team is going to show up.''
Presumably he means the team that leads the Pac-10 in pass defense, boasts four running backs with more than 150 ground yards, and soaks J.R. Redmond for all he's worth. The talented tailback is averaging 5.2 yards per carry, though he has been bothered lately by a shoulder sprain.
One reason the Devils are playing better is the recent health of quarterback Ryan Kealy, a.k.a. Jake Plummer Lite, whose early-season knee and rib injuries help explain his 4/6 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
He's a Cougar-slayer. In two wins over Washington State, one of which knocked the Cougs out of national title contention in 1997, Kealy is 44-for-69 for 493 yards, seven touchdowns and no interceptions.
"I don't know what he's got against the Cougs,'' Price said. "He's real quick, and he throws well on the move. He likes to throw to the tight ends and backs -- a lot of play-action pass, bootlegs. I think if he were in our offense, he might not be as good as he is in theirs. He fits what they do well.''
Kealy has been especially effective throwing over the middle to 6-foot-5, 232-pound tight end Todd Heap, whose stats read like a wide receiver's: 22 catches for a 15.5 average.
"They're going to throw to the tight end in key situations, and when they get to the red zone, they're going to throw posts to the outside receivers,'' said Price, whose open date last week gave him extra time to study the Sun Devils. "That's the consistent thing they've done.
"We need to smother that tight end,'' he said. "If he's open, he'll ward you off with his body and make the catch with his hands. You need to stand (between) him and the quarterback, so it's impossible to throw the ball to him.''
On defense, the Devils are getting inspired play from defensive lineman Erik Flowers, who has six sacks. He "has played like a man possessed the last three weeks,'' Snyder said. "Remember back a few years ago, people designed their offense to take care of Derrick Rodgers. They're doing that now with Erik Flowers. It hurts an offense to have to do that.''
For one thing, it leaves an offense vulnerable to blitz.
"I think they're going to do that against us,'' Price said. "I think they're gong to put pressure on Steve (Birnbaum), try to bump our guys, make us execute perfect passes, and take the run away form us. It's our job to spread them out, burn them... and be able to run the ball when they come out of that blitz.''
One of the advantages of WSU's spread offense is that "they probably will be able to see our blitz,'' Snyder said. "When you're really spread out, it's hard to disguise.''
For better or worse, though, Arizona State has been a master of disguise.

Saturday, October 23, 1999

More Cougar worries; As if WSU doesn't already have enough to worry about, here comes ASU, the heat

Dale Grummert

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Six weeks ago, life was simple. Injuries, crimes, NCAA edicts -- these were Washington State's only worries.
Now come a congenital spinal condition and two disciplinary suspensions. Rarely has an assault on the Cougar depth chart been so diverse.
In all, four more regulars will be absent during at least the early portions of the Cougars' game against Arizona State at sweltering Sun Devil Stadium. For the WSU offense, only five players who had been listed No. 1 in preseason camp will start today.
The disciplinary issue is a tricky one, since slotback Leaford Hackett and cornerback LeJuan Gibbons didn't intentionally miss practice Monday. In demoting them to backup roles for this game, coach Mike Price is basically punishing them for booking flights to Pullman on Monday instead of Sunday, and putting their fate in the hands of the airlines.
The Cougars, 2-4, have decided they can't trust their fate to anyone -- not to airlines or referees or Madame Luck. They figure everyone wants them to lose. Their two-game winning streak is, above all, a show of defiance.
In announcing the sanctions Tuesday, an irritated Price said "they will play, late in the game, when I feel like they're going to play."
But the Cougars may need them early. Gibbons' absence forces the Cougars to return Lamont Thompson to cornerback, where he has not looked comfortable, and applies more pressure on the other corner, freshman Marcus Trufant.
In practice Monday, WSU secondary coach Craig Bray was down to five usable players. Gibbons' arrival the next day gave him six. With strong safety Earl Riley still nursing a turf toe, the Cougs will saddle up Torry Hollimon, who is smart, savvy but small. As a workhorse, he will be playing out of character.
"You need to rotate guys -- that's a physical position," Bray said. "And (Hollimon) is banged up -- a bad wrist, bad ribs. (Free safety Billy Newman) has got a bad knee. Holy cow. It's a motley crew."
It's true that Arizona State's run-oriented offense doesn't place a great strain on cornerbacks, but its emphasis on throwing to tight end Todd Heap will place extra demands on Hollimon.
As for Hackett, the Cougars have virtually played without him since ending their 12-game losing streak three weeks ago. He was getting over a shoulder sprain when he drew this bye-week tardiness rap -- a surprising one, since he's considered the club's most diligent player.
Against ASU's pass defense, ranked No. 1 in the Pac-10, the Cougars will be tempted to lift Hackett's suspension as soon as possible. For one thing, Nian Taylor dropped several more passes in the last outing, despite his 101 reception yards.
Another player who missed Monday's practice, Matt Kegel, was knocked off the travel roster, meaning the Cougars have no third-string quarterback aside from walk-on Billy Graffis.
Then there's the Mark Hedeen issue. Naturally the Cougars are grateful to have detected his cervical stenonis before it caused him injury. He is assuming his football career is done, pending further medical tests.
But his absence will be felt. Although Hedeen had already lost his starting defensive-end position, he was part of a D-line rotation that may be hard-pressed today. Cougar defenders haven't allowed a point since Arizona's Hail Mary touchdown Sept. 25, but earlier in the season they showed a distinct vulnerability to a hard-nosed running attack, which is what they will get in Arizona State and a presumably healthy J.R. Redmond.
These depth questions are harshened by the desert heat, which tends to oppress the Cougars even in night games. Kickoff today is 4 p.m.
"You've heard of the House of Pain?" ASU offensive coordinator Dan Cozzetto said. "This is the House of Heat. The heat just kind of centers on the field. It will be nice, pleasant weather for us. If it gets 80 degrees, it's cold for us."
Yet another WSU freshman will make his starting debut: 264-pound Derrick Roche will be the right guard, replacing Phil Locker. That pushes to eight the number of Cougar rookies to have started this year.
Locker's problem? A pulled muscle. How passe.

Sunday, October 24, 1999

Arizona State running back J.R. Redmond is brought down by a host of Washington State defenders, including Anthony Adepipe, Steve Gleason and Rob Meier. ASU defeated WSU 33-21 Saturday at Tempe, Ariz.

Cougars play with fire, get burned; ASU overcomes 11-point first half deficit to defeat WSU 33-21

Dale Grummert

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Steve Gleason said the problems began with the defense. Mike Price said they began with the offense. Let's say they're both right. At halftime, some little Sun Devil whispered in every Cougar's ear: It's time to collapse. And most of them did.
Injury-riddled and eventually overpowered, Washington State watched an 11-point first-half lead systematically dwindle into a 33-21 loss Saturday night to Arizona State.
The inspired substitutions, the trick plays, the psychological ploys, all the devices the Cougars had used to win their previous two games and establish a 21-10 lead in the desert heat -- they seemed to disappeared at the same time.
In no particular order, the Cougars suddenly failed to pick up stunts and blitzes, failed to wrap an arm around J.R. Redmond, failed to cover Kareem Anderson's heroic punts.
No ASU running play seemed complete until Redmond, the Sun Devils' 220-pound tailback, had broken two or three tackles, en route to his 241 all-purpose yards, including 165 rushing.
The Cougars might have survived Redmond's assault if only they had given their defense an occasional breather. But after rolling to 16 first downs in the first half, they managed only two in the second. Their pass protection didn't really collapse -- just faltered long enough to disrupt Steve Birnbaum's composure, and the quarterback threw 2-for-8 after intermission.
"They're a strong team, but we gave them that game," WSU offensive tackle Ryan Tujague said. "From the first half to the second half, there was a huge difference. We just didn't execute in the second half."
Erik Flowers sacked Birnbaum twice and Adam Archuleta made three tackles for losses as the Sun Devils, 4-3, made it 2-for-2 against the Pac-10's Washington schools in successive weeks. The Cougars fell to 2-5.
"I am really proud of the way the defense played in the second half," ASU coach Bruce Snyder said. "They were really stimulated, and we were playing with a lot of players that probably shouldn't have been playing."
By this time, the desert sun had given way to a large desert moon above Sun Devil Stadium, but perhaps the heat had done its damage. It was one more drain on WSU's meager resources, on a night when the Cougars sustained half a dozen more injuries, including leg sprains that may knock linebackers Curtis Holden and Raonall Smith out of next week's game against Oregon State.
"It was a rough night physically for the defense, and (on offense) it was just a very poorly executive scheme," Washington State coach Mike Price said. The Sun Devils "didn't really make any drastic changes defensively. But we just didn't execute. We went back and ran the top 10 plays (from the original script) and we didn't line up right."
The injuries, and the scramble for substitutions, may explain why the Cougars appeared confused at times. On a second-quarter play that resulted in a Lamont Thompson interception, WSU had only 10 men on the field.
Technically, Gleason was right: The WSU defense was the first to crack. Leading 21-13 at halftime, the Cougars offered little resistance when ASU repeatedly sent Redmond bursting up the middle to fuel touchdown drives on their first two possessions of the third quarter.
"I think it started with the defense, that first drive," said Gleason, who by staying relatively healthy is bucking the odds as a Cougar linebacker. "They came out running the ball. We lost a couple of our linebackers, and they just outplayed us the second half."
The replacements for Holden and Smith were Tupo Tuupo and Serign Marong, who "are very capable of playing," Gleason said. "They need to step up a little bit and make some plays."
Ryan Kealy spiced up the Devil attack with a conservative but sharp 20-for-34 passing performance for 203 yards. The Cougars, as planned, shut down tight end Todd Heap in the first half, but he caught five balls for 54 yards in the second.
Redmond's 4-yard TD run with 7:04 left was the clincher, creating the final score.
In the early going, the Cougars were at least opportunistic. They capitalized on 27 penalty yards to score on their first possession, and they fashioned a gritty 65-yard second-quarter TD drive featuring key third-down plays to make it 21-10.
Stephen Baker's 48-yard field goal late in the second period put ASU's comeback in motion.
One of the Cougars' chief lapses in the second half came on return coverage. The Sun Devils rang up 179 return yards, including 118 by Delvon Flowers on kickoffs.
For both teams, the verdict was holistic -- a complete collapse for one, a complete triumph for the other. Redmond's first postgame remark was the giveaway, a highly unusual remark for a star tailback. He thanked his defense.
Washington St.14 7 0 0--21
Arizona St. 3 10 14 6--33
First Quarter
WSU--Burnett 11 run (Lindell kick), 11:31.
WSU--Hackett 11 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 4:51.
ASU--FG Baker 37, 1:37.
Second Quarter
ASU--Redmond 2 run (Baker kick), 10:35.
WSU--Birnbaum 1 run (Lindell kick), 6:15.
ASU--FG Baker 48, :51.
Third Quarter
ASU--Redmond 6 run (pass failed), 11:01.
ASU--Heap 1 pass from Kealy (Heap pass from Kealy), 7:10.
Fourth Quarter
ASU--Redmond 3 run (pass failed), 7:04.
A--57,537.
WSU ASU
First downs 18 25
Rushes-yards 35-150 48-217
Passing 141 203
Comp-Att-Int15-30-0 20-34-1
Return Yards 119 179
Punts-Avg. 7-48 5-47
Fumbles-Lost 1-0 1-0
Penalties-Yards 4-24 6-60
Time of Possession 26:31 33:29
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Washington St., Burnett 22-136, Hawkins 4-21, Anderson 1-16, Hackett 1-(minus 3), Birnbaum 7-(minus 20). Arizona St., Redmond 35-165, T. Smith 3-39, Green 5-27, Hightower 1-9, Flowers 1-(minus 8), Kealy 3-(minus 15).
PASSING--Washington St., Birnbaum 15-29-0-141, Philley 0-1-0-0. Arizona St., Kealy 20-34-1-203.
RECEIVING--Washington St., Hackett 5-47, Taylor 5-41, Mizin 2-22, Burnett 2-2, Williams 1-29. Arizona St., McDonald 6-57, Heap 5-54, R. Williams 4-40, Bates 2-13, Smith 1-17, Forth 1-13, Redmond 1-9.

Sunday, October 24, 1999

Arizona State 33, Washington St. 21
Quick fact

In the third quarter, the Cougars completed one pass, for 10 yards.

Key plays

l In a 60-yard Arizona State drive, J.R. Redmond produces 51 of those yards with his aggressive dives, scoring from the 2 to cut Washington State's lead to 14-10 in the second quarter.
l Delvon Flowers returns the second-half kickoff 41 yards to spark a scoring drive capped by Redmond's 6-yard run. The Sun Devils pull to within 21-19.
l On ASU's next series, Redmond breaks tackle after tackle while keying a TD drive culminating in Ryan Kealy's 1-yard pass to Todd Heap. That puts ASU on top 27-21.
l Kealy throws to Terrelle Smith for a 17-yard gain to the WSU 4-yard line, setting up a 4-yard Redmond touchdown that puts the game out of reach at 33-21 midway through the fourth quarter.
WSU's next game
The Cougars return home to face Oregon State at 1 p.m. this Saturday. OSU defeated UCLA 55-7 on Saturday

Monday, October 25, 1999

Cougs only have change for a $20; WSU's red-zone showing is superb, for what it's worth

Dale Grummert

TEMPE, Ariz. -- If the Cougars owned a restaurant, they would call it the Red Zone. All you can eat for under 20 yards. House specialties would be corned beef and hashmarks, rice pylon and safety souffle.
Here's the point: The walls of this place would be covered with stainless steel or floor-to-ceiling mirrors -- a little trick that undersized restaurants use to create a false sense of spaciousness. That's basically what Washington State is doing this season.
Seventeen-for-17. That's the Cougars' success ratio once they arrive in the "red zone," or inside the opponent's 20-yard line. It breaks down into 16 touchdowns and one field goal. No fumbles, no interceptions, no muffed kicks. For Nebraska, that would be an excellent statistic. For a spread-passing team that's 2-5, it's more than excellent. It's uncanny.
Goodness knows the Cougars aren't achieving this red-zone mastery in the traditional fashion, with a devastating power game. Show them a third-and-2 on the 50-yard line, and they'll show you their wonderful punter.
But the Cougars, you see, like to set up a maze of mirrors at the back of the end zone. Any opposing coach will tell you that. Last week Arizona State's Bruce Snyder called Mike Price a mad scientist, but actually he's the interior decorator for a hall of mirrors.
In the red zone, those Cougar wide-side receivers fake to the inside, slip the cornerback into their back pocket and, voila -- endless latitudes of end zone. When Steve Birnbaum lobs the ball, it floats forever on a mound of cotton candy. Then it falls gently into the hands of, say, a leaping Leaford Hackett, who lands acrobatically within inches of the sideline.
Either that, or Birny hands off to Deon Burnett, who does his best running when he can smell the popcorn in the end-zone concession stand.
Any normal passing team, indeed any normal Washington State team, prefers operating between the 20-yard lines. They cross the red-zone bridge when they come to it. These teams like real spaciousness. They like a deep horizon ahead of them because the threat of a takeoff route chastens the defensive backs -- prompts them to play soft and shrug off the curls and outs.
But the Cougars, at least against good defenses, have no horizon plays this year; they've lost the ability to stretch an opponent vertically. The battered, coltish offensive line isn't giving Birnbaum enough time. Birnbaum isn't consistently accurate on his deep throws.
The receivers, especially without Milton Wynn, are quick and agile but not blindingly fast. Nian Taylor is a card-carrying deep threat, but his card was forged by foreign spies. He has become a possession receiver. This time, the Cougars didn't even give him a chance to drop another over-the-shoulder prize.
Marcus Williams is a rangy wide-out who conceivably can pose a big-play threat. But at the moment his game isn't vertical routes -- it's Greco-Roman wrestling. It's hand games. George W. Bush doesn't shake as many hands in a day as Marcus Williams does as he's fighting for receptions on those sideline timing routes.
These are nice skills, of course. They are red-zone skills, in which angle and attitude and aggression carry the day. But the Cougars need more than that. This was obvious Saturday night in their 33-21 loss at Arizona State.
When you step out of the Phoenix airport in late October, the warmth embraces you like an undeserved blessing. At a time when northerners are putting their winter game-face on, Arizonans are laughing their deep, vaguely sinister laugh, as if they've swindled the devil out of another summer day. In this land of coarse pickup lines, of spacious vistas, of unjust deserts, the Cougars just didn't have the right stuff. They had too much going against them: the injuries, the bad matchups, the brutal talents of J.R. Redmond.
Washington State could scarcely have played a better first half. If the Cougs had started slowly and allowed ASU to grind away with its deep supply of tailbacks, this could have been gruesome.
They didn't. Williams induced a pass-interference call -- his specialty -- on the WSU's first series, and the Sun Devils added a roughing-the-passer call as the Cougars breezed to a red-zone touchdown by Burnett. In the second quarter Hackett caught a red-zone lob for another TD, but the 14-0 lead felt, yes, slightly undeserved -- a coarse pickup line that somehow worked.
Beyond doubt, the Cougars deserved their third score. From the 18-yard line, Birnbaum fired a dart to freshman tight end Russell Mizin, who was whacked by charging defenders from both sides. As if to prove the Cougars own this part of the field, Mizin clung to the ball and blithely rose to his feet, while linebacker Adam Archuleta lay for a moment of pain. Birnbaum sneaked over the goal line two plays later.
Yet the WSU lead dissipated quickly in the second half when the Devils regained their bearings and finally slipped into their meat-grinding mode with Redmond and friends.
The Washington State offense played into their hands by going nowhere fast. Williams was nursing a sore knee. The young offensive linemen were puzzling with disguised blitzes -- desert mirages. Birnbaum got a little antsy. And during a key stretch beginning late in the second quarter, the WSU offense sputtered to four 3-and-outs in five possessions.
And owning the red zone does no good when you're stuck somewhere in the frigid blue.
COUGAR NOTES -- The injury list gets longer. Although Curtis Holden may be ready for Saturday's home against Oregon State, Raonall Smith and Brad Philley are doubtful. In addition to the injuries announced after the game, Ing Aleaga has a pinched nerve, Torry Hollimon a concussion and Anthony Adedipe bruised ribs. Billy Newman played strongly again despite a case of the flu that kept him out of practice Sunday.

Thursday, October 28, 1999

Erickson plotting another revival; Former Idaho, WSU coach working his magic with Beavers

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- In the 11 years since Dennis Erickson left Washington State, he has won two national championships and spent four seasons in the National Football League. Yet his legacy seems unchanged. Back then, he was known as a reviver of college football programs in the Northwest. At the moment, that seems truer than ever.
If he can wrangle two wins out of Oregon State's final four games this season, he will achieve the Beavers' first winning season in 29 years -- the sort of statistic that can seal a person's legacy once and for all.
To that end, Erickson, 52, will take his best jab at one of the former beneficiaries of his talents, Washington State, which plays host to the Beavers at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Although his return to the Palouse, where he met success in the 1980s at Idaho as well as Washington State, is the story on every reporter's notepad this week, Erickson will try to treat this as just another game.
"It's been 11 years,'' he points out, though he admits that coaching against the Cougars "is going to be strange, no question about that.''
In a way, Erickson has always seemed the purest of coaches. He grew up in the Seattle suburb of Everett, the hardscrabble, football-minded town that has produced so many Pac-10 coaches, including his successor at WSU, Mike Price. During his years on the Palouse, Erickson seemed to adore the game and bristle at the rhetoric. Now, after coaching in a fishbowl called Miami for five years, he is perhaps more tolerant of the rhetoric.
"The hype part of it doesn't bother me at all,'' he says. "Years ago, when I was younger, it might have. ... In Miami, you play so many big games. It's either a big game for you, or a big game for whoever's playing you. You kind of get used to that type of stuff.''
As program-revivers go, there are those who work methodically, who need time to establish roots and recruit to their needs. There are others who wield an instant magic, who motivate and beseech and have a knack for stretching their meager inheritance. This is what Erickson did, at Idaho, Wyoming and Washington State.
"I think he's improved every program he's been in,'' says Price, the Cougar coach who has been a friend of Erickson since childhood. "He's doing the same thing at Oregon State.''
His groundwork at Corvallis, since his hiring in January, has been made somewhat easier by the accomplishments of his predecessor, Mike Riley, whose two-year stay culminated in a rousing overtime victory over Oregon last year. Still, the job has a history of devouring coaches and their reputations.
"It's different -- because they've never won here,'' Erickson says. "When I went to Washington State, Jim Walden had won and been to bowl games. At Idaho, they'd had winning seasons at certain times. But here it hasn't been done since 1970.''
He underplays his impact on the Palouse. Before he took over at Idaho in 1982, the Vandals had managed only two winning seasons in a decade. He went 32-15 in four years.
Before his arrival at WSU in 1987, the Cougars had mustered only one bowl berth in 56 years. He took them to the Aloha Bowl in his second season.
For one thing, Erickson saw, perhaps earlier that most coaches, that the new breeds of passing attacks that were emerging on the West Coast in the late 1970s were particularly effective in rejuvenating a sagging offense, because they required less talent and bulk in the front line than a running attack did.
Although Erickson is making full use of a talented running back this year, Ken Simonton, and although his run-pass ratio is almost 50-50, he finds himself in a familiar position, leading the conference in passing offense -- with a 5-foot-10 quarterback, no less. Jonathan Smith has thrown for almost 2,000 yards in seven games for the Beavers, who are 4-3 overall and 1-3 in the Pac-10.
"I think it's easier to turn (a program) around with some of the spread things we're doing,'' Erickson says. "But I think you've still got to be good on defense. That's the key to keeping anything consistent.''
He opened the season with three straight wins, then endured three predictable losses. The real breakthrough came last week, in a 55-7 win over UCLA, the Beavers' most lopsided victory ever over a Pac-10 team.
"Anytime you're coming in and trying to put in something new,'' he says, "they buy into it, but until you have some good things happen to you, I think sometimes they wonder.''
In directing his turnarounds at Idaho, Wyoming and WSU, Erickson displayed a game-day astuteness that made him a natural choice for a big-time program like Miami. In hiring him away from WSU in 1989, the Hurricanes asked him not to revive but to maintain. He did that, winning a national title in his first season and again in 1991.
But the Miami experience scrambled the course of Erickson's career. His departure was touched by an academic scandal from which the Hurricanes were slow to recover.
At the time, it seemed just one more reason why Erickson was an ideal candidate for the NFL, where the hype was more subdued and the job was more straightforward. All he had to do was coach. Beyond that, it was the Seattle Seahawks who had hired him: He was going home.
But, for whatever reason, his approach didn't work with the Seahawks, who went 31-33 in his four seasons.
At the time of his firing, the University of Washington job was opening up, but Erickson says he didn't give a thought to pursuing it. "The situation there, in Seattle, with the Seahawks, there was just no way that could ever work,'' he says.
Nor did the Oregon State opening have an instant appeal. "I had to talk to people about it -- find out what direction they wanted to go with the program. There seemed to be a commitment.''
In a sense, the Beavers offered Erickson something Seattle somehow failed to offer: a way back to his roots.

Saturday, October 30, 1999

Cougars need to cover up vulnerabilities; Bruised ribs aside, WSU must get offense in working order as it welcomes Erickson, upstart OSU

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- The star running back for Oregon State will be wearing a "flak jacket.'' So will three defensive ends for Washington State. This may be a college football game or it may be a SWAT maneuver, but sometimes in late October it's hard to tell the difference.
Bruised ribs are the injury du jour at Martin Stadium, where Ken Simonton will match plastic torso protection with Cougar defenders like Austin Matson, Jesse Ratcliff and Anthony Adedipe.
With players bouncing off one another like so many Michelin men, the football is perhaps the X factor.
"Running backs that wear that flak jacket sometimes have a tendency to fumble the football, because it's hard to get the feel of the ball against that plastic,'' WSU coach Mike Price said, giving the power of suggestion a whirl. "We've got three guys with bad ribs and flak jackets, but they're not going to be carrying the football.''
Simonton and a host of banged-up Cougars have been lying low in practice this week, hoping to recover for today's 1 p.m. kickoff.
If anyone's been taking flak this week, it's the Washington State offense, which mustered only two first downs in the second half of a loss last week at Arizona State.
After showing dramatic improvement for 2« games, the Cougars shut down -- on a dime, according to the Sun Devils. They seemed to think their dime defensive package had caught the Cougars off-guard. But Price would have none of it.
"I wish I could say, 'Arizona State, boy, they went to a Chicago Bear defense in the second half and we weren't ready for it -- they went two-deep and bumped our receivers and blitzed.'
"They didn't do anything differently than they did in the first half. We just didn't come out with the intensity and the focus we needed. ... The offense doesn't have any excuses and I don't want to give them any.''
In any case, it's something of a pattern. The Cougars are being outscored 73-17 in the third quarter.
"We have three goals for this game, and that's the third goal, to win the third quarter,'' Price said. "We are going to make some changes (in halftime routine). We are going to do some planning and strategic things differently. That's been a bone of contention for us all week.''
Price and Oregon State coach Dennis Erickson will be hard-pressed to surprise each other. They were childhood friends, they conferred often when Erickson was at Miami and the Seattle Seahawks, and their playbooks are virtually identical. Because of the similarity, the Cougars drilled their first-string offense against their first-string defense for 15 minutes Tuesday and for 25 Wednesday.
Statistically, the resemblance vanishes. The Beavers lead the Pac-10 in total offense, and Cougars are ninth. Only seven games into the season, Simonton is 58 yards shy of 1,000 yards rushing, while Jonathan Smith 78 yards short of 2,000 passing.
"He's not running his full playbook,'' Price said, "and I'm not running our full playbook. His success has been continuity, and he's done a nice job of selecting the plays that fit his personnel best.''
Injuries on the interior line have undermined WSU's offensive consistency, but Price said his linemen are at their healthiest in weeks. Reed Raymond and Phil Locker will probably start.
Price is more forgiving of the defense, which gave up 217 rushing yards to Arizona State.
"You've got two tackles that are really hurting, two inside linebackers really hurting, two free safeties down the middle really hurting,'' the coach said. "That's why the defense didn't do well.''
And little has changed since then. One of those linebackers, Raonall Smith, may need knee surgery and will miss today's game. The other, Curtis Holden, may start -- with a padded wrist and a tender knee. Safety Lamont Thompson is questionable with his neck injury.
If the heart of the Cougar defense is subpar, so is the stake that Erickson would like to drive through it. But, if he can, he'll send Simonton up the middle again and again -- 3 yards and a cloud of flak.

Sunday, October 31, 1999

Oregon State's James Allen closes in on WSU running back Deon Burnett
Old ally stumps Cougs; Erickson victorious in return to Palouse

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- In a way, it was just another loss, another sunny Saturday gone awry, another afternoon when the offense couldn't pick up blitzes and the defense got tired. The familiar pattern.
Then again, the opponent was Oregon State. That may not mean much to a freshman from Los Angeles. To someone like Steve Gleason, Washington State's 27-13 loss offered its own flavor of pain.
"Losing to Oregon State at home is a disgrace, as far as I'm concerned,'' said the senior linebacker, quietly simmering in a corner of the interview room. "To the seniors, it was tough. We've never lost to Oregon State.''
Yet it was a new species of Oregon State, a team coached by a fellow who owns two national-championship rings, a team that executed an ideal defensive game plan.
"Yeah, but we've got just as good of athletes,'' Gleason said. "I don't know what the problem is.''
For one thing, the WSU defense was overtaxed again, and a 13-6 halftime deficit expanded to 27-6 midway through the fourth quarter.
"The defense, we were tired -- we had four or five three-and-outs when the offense didn't score,'' said Gleason, who has never come close to criticizing the offense before. "So we need a little bit of offensive support.''
Gleason, after all, was 20 months old the last time Oregon State won in Pullman, in 1978.
In Dennis Erickson's first competitive appearance in Pullman since he left Washington State in 1988, the first-year Beaver coach pulled to within one victory of the school's first winning season since 1970. The Beavers are 5-3, and WSU seems in danger of usurping their role as Pac-10 whipping boy, falling to 2-6 this season and 2-14 since September 1998.
"You take it one step at a time, basically, with this program,'' said Erickson, who won two national titles with Miami. "We talked all week about getting (win) No. 5.''
With OSU defenders crowding the line of scrimmage and confusing Cougar linemen with well-timed and wholehearted blitzes, the Cougars crept into Beaver territory only once in the second half before a late drive that produced their only touchdown, with nine seconds left. Until then, Rian Lindell's 32- and 50-yard field goals had provided all their scoring.
The Cougars groped for ways to beat this blitz, to little avail, aside from the 112 rushing yards by Deon Burnett. In passing 18-for-34, Steve Birnbaum was sacked four times and harassed into throwaways time after time.
"Yes, they're bringing it (the blitzes), and we know how to pick it up,'' said Birnbaum. "But a lot of times we're starting out second-and-15 because of penalties or dumb things that we're doing. Then it's easy (for the defense) to tee off, and hard to pick up.''
Beavers linebacker Darnell Robinson recovered a Burnett fumble, emphatically sacked Birnbaum on third down in the second quarter and finished with three tackles for losses.
"Their defense may be small, but they fly around,'' said WSU reserve running back Adam Hawkins. "They may not be 260, 270 on the front line, but when they hit you, you know it. They are quick, they're fast -- I give their defense a lot of credit. They held us (away) from a lot of schemes we wanted to do early in the game.''
The Cougar defense played well until the third quarter, when Oregon State star tailback Ken Simonton took the field for the first time and seemed unbothered by his bruised ribs. With a spring in his step that WSU couldn't match at that point, Simonton scored on a 2-yard quick pitch to make it 20-6, and later rammed in from the 1-yard line to put the game out of reach with 7:30 left. He and understudy Antonio Battle combined for 128 rushing yards.
But "I don't think he was the difference,'' WSU coach Mike Price said. "I think Jonathan Smith, their quarterback, was probably the difference-maker.''
Price was probably thinking of plays like Smith's third-and-6 throw to Simonton for a 23-yard gain to key the third-quarter touchdown -- plays in which the Beavers beat the blitz in a way the Cougars never could.
"You've got to give them credit,'' Gleason said. "They're a good team; they've got some good athletes over there. But we're not supposed to lose to OSU.''
Oregon St.10 3 7 7--27
WashingtonSt. 3 3 0 7--13
First Quarter
OSU--Battle 1 run (Cesca kick), 8:51
OSU--FG Cesca 22, 4:44
WSU--FG Lindell 32, 3:44
Second Quarter
OSU--FG Cesca 25, 13:36
WSU--FG Lindell 50, 3:08
Third Quarter
OSU--Simonton 2 run (Cesca kick), 2:48
Fourth Quarter
OSU--Simonton 1 run (Cesca kick), 7:30
WSU--Burnett 2 run (Lindell kick), 0:09.
A--34,240.
OSU WSU
First downs 19 17
Rushes-yards 47-163 33-109
Passing 245 194
Comp-Att-Int17-27-0 18-34-0
Return Yards 47 100
Punts-Avg. 5-43.4 8-41.6
Fumbles-Lost 2-1 1-1
Penalties-Yards 4-31 5-45
Time of Possession 33:18 26:42
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--OSU, Battle 26-86, Simonton 9-41, Mobley 6-28, Prescott 1-9, Smith 5-minus 1. WSU, Burnett 20-112, Hawkins 7-31, Nettles 1-minus 3, Birnbaum 5-minus 31.
PASSING--OSU, Smith 17-27-0-245. WSU, Birnbaum 18-34-0-194.
RECEIVING--OSU, Percoats 4-111, Maurer 4-55, Prescott 4-20, Tompkins 2-15, Simonton 1-23, Battle 1-12, Jones 1-9. WSU, Hackett 7-94, Taylor 4-60, Burnett 4-27, Henderson 1-8, Mizin 1-5, Hawkins 1-0.

Sunday, October 31, 1999

Erickson not extended warm welcome

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Dennis Erickson perhaps thought he could slip into Pullman and slip out. Maybe no one would remember him.
"It's been 11 years," he said beforehand, the point being that he would have no former players on the Washington State roster when he brought his new team into town.
But there are fans. Fans with long memories. Fans whose frustration level, not to mention their blood-alcohol level, increased as the afternoon wore on.
"Listening to some of the people in the stands, I think they're glad that I'm gone," Erickson said after Oregon State's 27-13 win Saturday. "It was pretty ugly out there -- not what I was expecting."
Erickson's departure from Washington State, after a two-year stay culminating in an Aloha Bowl victory in 1989, was actually far smoother than his exits from Wyoming and Miami (for different reasons), but his presence on the opponents' sideline evidently was too strong a temptation for WSU's vocal fans.
Nor did Erickson seem to relish pinning a defeat on his childhood friend, Mike Price.
"Mike and his players and the (WSU) program itself, I have great respect for," he said. "It's hard, but we're going to have to play every year, so we might as well get used to it."
Although it was Dad's Day, which is generally a good draw, Erickson's return was doubtless a prime attraction for some of the 34,240 ticket-purchasers. That's second-largest total of the season, and the actual body count was easily the largest.
The stadium wasn't the only thing that looked familiar to Erickson. Gusting winds from the east seemed to reach about 20 mph at times.
"When I came to warmups, boy, that thing was howling and I said, 'I've seen that before,"' Erickson said. "Our players knew about playing here and how tough it was. ... When we won the toss, we deferred because the wind was unbelievable."
The decision paid off when Imani Percoats blazed past WSU cornerback LeJuan Gibbons for a 59-yard reception on Oregon State's first series, setting up a 1-yard touchdown run by Antonio Battle. After the catch, Percoats dragged Gibbons for perhaps 15 yards before he finally going down on the 6-yard line.
GROUNDED -- It was a matchup of pass-minded coaches, but running backs played significant roles.
Just a sophomore, OSU's Ken Simonton pulled into a tie for the school's all-time scoring lead with 168 points. Wearing a protector for his bruised ribs, he scored two touchdowns after taking the field in the third quarter.
He had been replaced in the starting lineup by Antonio Battle, a junior-college transfer from Florida who ran effectively in the first half and finished with 86 rushing yards.
Washington State freshman Deon Burnett topped 100 ground yards for the fourth consecutive game, and his 2-yard touchdown run with nine seconds left averted WSU's first TD-less game since a 21-3 loss at Oregon State in 1994.
HOLDEN UP -- Middle linebacker Curtis Holden played almost the entire game for the Cougars despite his wrist and knee injuries. He finished with 10 tackles, a sack and a forced fumble.
"He's a warrior, man," fellow linebacker Steve Gleason said. "He's got a broken hand a sprained ligament in his knee, and he's still playing. He's the kind of player we need all over the field -- everywhere, offense and defense."
ETC. -- Grady Emmerson, replacing the injured Raonall Smith at strongside linebacker, led the Cougars with 11 tackles and forced a fumble. ... Strong safety Earl Riley played well despite his turf toe, but now he has a dislocated thumb as well. ... Price defended Steve Birnbaum's reaction to defensive pressure. "I don't think Steve's getting gun-shy," he said of the quarterback. "I thought he was in the second half against Arizona State, but I didn't feel he was this game. There was only one pass that I can recall that he should have stood in and thrown the ball."

Sunday, October 31, 1999

Oregon St. 27, WSU 13
Quick fact

Trailing 20-6 late in the third quarter, the Cougars decided at the last moment to punt on fourth-and-1 at their 33-yard line. Coach Mike Price later said he regretted the decision.
Key plays
A streaking Imani Percoats gets a step on cornerback LeJuan Gibbons, hauls in a pass from Jonathan Smith, and drags Gibbons along for about 15 yards to the Washington State 6-yard line, setting up Oregon State's first touchdown.
Darnell Robinson recovers a Deon Burnett fumble on the Cougar 27 on WSU's second possession, setting up a field goal.
Smith hits Ken Simonton for 23 yards on third down and later zings an over-the-middle pass to Martin Maurer to key an OSU scoring drive that makes it 20-6 in the third quarter.
Despite WSU protests, officials rule that Percoats stays inbounds for a 27-yard reception. That leads to a Simonton TD that puts the lead to 27-6 midway through the fourth period.
WSU's next game
The Cougars travel to Eugene to play Oregon at 7 p.m. Saturday. The Ducks nipped Arizona State 20-17.

Monday, November 1, 1999

Oregon State's Toalei Talataina (51). Darnell Robinson (5) and Aaron Wells (49) celebrate Robinson's first-quarter recovery of a fumble by Washington State running back Deon Burnett. It was that kind of day for WSU Saturday as it fell 27-13 in Pullman

Giving 'em a reason to grouse; Leaving the Cougs is one thing; beating them another

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Every lighthearted Oregon State player, every tune-whistling Oregon State assistant coach, every gleeful Oregon State equipment jockey, strolled through the narrow hallway while a Spokane television crew and a couple of other media stragglers waited for Dennis Erickson.
They had been detained in the other camp, the heavy-hearted camp, where after 14 losses in 16 games, Washington State's emotional fallout was finally starting to show, just a bit.
But with Erickson, you can't be a straggler. If you give him a chance to don his tie, comb his hair and steady his blood pressure, you've blown your already meager chance to get the real Erickson, the mythic dragon. He will stop and talk; he will remember your name and shake your hand. But he won't breathe fire.
If Erickson in recent years has acquired a diminished, at times haggard appearance, his little reward for coaching in the National Football League for four seasons, he looked crisp and dapper and freshly resolute Saturday after his 27-13 win against one of his several former teams, Washington State.
At a graying 52, he is still the prodigal son, with a shrewd mastery of on-the-field risk, an accessible if wary presence with the media, and a Golden Boy smile that he botches whenever he tries to fake.
"Look, Dennis,'' Bill Clinton would tell him, "a smile is not a third-down blitz. When you look into the camera, let the smile linger a spell. Let it fade like a tender jonquil. Don't turn away and bite the thing off. If you do, the game is up.''
That's why everyone forgives the one wayward Golden Boy, and why everyone resents the other. It's these fatal little attacks of sincerity.
In the opposite camp, Steve Gleason was smoldering.
He was the leading tackler on the Cougars' Rose Bowl team in 1997, and he's the leading tackler now, but in between these seasons there lies such a yawning gulf, such an imponderable WSU comedown, that the senior linebacker now seemed newly incredulous.
Losing to Oregon State in Pullman was the final indignity. It hadn't happened since 1978. It was a reminder that the Pac-10 office is taking applications for doormat and the Cougars seem to be first in line. Normally as mild and self-editing in his public remarks as Erickson at his most combed and composed, Gleason sat red-eyed in the interview room and hinted, more with expression than words, that the struggling Cougar offense was growing complacent.
Well, a person can deal with only one dragon at a time, but that's why there are quote sheets. While the Spokane TV crew was interviewing the crestfallen Cougars, Erickson was evidently smiling a real smile for Oregon State reporters.
"Listening to some people in the stands, I think they're glad that I'm gone,'' went the quote. "It was pretty ugly out there -- not what I was expecting.''
Even here, he's dissembling a bit. Glad he's gone? Uh, no. They're still miffed that he left. After 11 years, they still feel snubbed, though perhaps they realize that scarcely a coach in the country would have turned down that Miami job in 1989 -- and, in fact, would not have hesitated or dissembled or whatever it was that Erickson was doing in the days preceding the announcement.
There is a profound flattery behind the fans' enmity, of course. If the magic dragon had stayed in Pullman, they imagine, the Rose Bowl apotheosis would have come in 1989, the national championship in '90, the Super Bowl in '91. There would be a Cougar entry in the Ryder Cup, a Cougar coach in the White House, Cougar cheese on the moon.
But no. Instead, there comes this ignominious loss to Oregon State, with Erickson standing there like Judas, like a symbol for everything that's gone wrong in Pullman for the past two years.
These fans might have forgiven the man if he had accepted the Miami job more firmly, if he hadn't appeared to waver, if he and his third-down smile had been insincere enough to smooth out all the wrinkles.
After Saturday, though, it's a moot point.
COUGAR NOTES -- The MRI on linebacker Raonall Smith indicated a strained knee ligament, which means surgery won't be required after all. He may be back in a couple of weeks.... Eric Boose, named the Cougars' defensive lineman of the week after his first career start, is nursing a shoulder injury.... Defensive back Lamont Thompson (sore neck) remains questionable for the Cougars' game at 7 p.m. Saturday at Oregon.

Wednesday, November 4, 1999

Ducks in common position of QB flux; Bellotti insists he's comfortable with either Harrington or Feely calling shots

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Quarterback muddles have become so de rigueur in the Pac-10 that nobody is banging down Mike Bellotti's door to find out who will start this week against Washington State. Not that he would tell them anyway. He almost seems to be enjoying his dilemma.
"(It's) not as bad on a coaching staff as people think,'' the Ducks boss said Wednesday, quite convincingly. "It's nice to have the dilemma of two very, very good, potentially great quarterbacks that both can get it done.''
For one thing, the issue sprang up under such giddy circumstances, when Joey Harrington directed a game-winning touchdown drive in the final 55 seconds last week against Arizona State. The sophomore backup from Portland hit Marshaun Tucker with a 29-yard scoring pass with nine seconds left for a 20-17 win.
Therefore A.J. Feeley, the third-ranked quarterback in the conference, may be second string soon. Bellotti said he will probably decide on a starter by Thursday night.
Just for fun, though, he might keep the Cougars guessing until Saturday's 7 p.m. kickoff at Eugene, Ore. Dangerous and relatively deep at several offensive positions, the Ducks (3-2 league, 5-3 overall) are favored by two touchdowns and can clinch bowl eligibility with a win.
Bellotti downplays the differences between his two 6-foot-4 quarterbacks, but Washington State coach Mike Price said they do differ. Perhaps Harrington is Oregon's answer to the quarterback on everybody's lips this week, the option-oriented Marques Tuiasosopo of Washington.
"A.J. Feeley has not played well the last three games,'' Price said. "I don't know why that is, because when he's good, he can be as good as anybody. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if they started Harrington. He's a little quicker, a little more agile. They'll throw a little option in there with Harrington at quarterback.''
In any case, quarterback won't be the Cougars' major defensive worry. That would be Reuben Droughns, the gifted but injury-prone senior tailback who has gobbled up 390 rushing yards in the past two games.
As if scrambling to get their money's worth from Droughns, the Ducks have given him 82 carries in those two games, since he returned from his latest injury.
"Reuben is just making up for lost time,'' Bellotti said. "We do monitor this stuff. Eighty carries in two weeks is quite a bit, but if there's a young man who can handle it, it's Reuben Droughns.''
Another Oregon weapon is senior Tony Hartley, the steady wide receiver who is approaching several UO career reception records. Each of his last 20 catches has gone for a first down or a touchdown.
"There's no question Tony gets overlooked,'' Bellotti said. "He very unassumedly goes about assaulting the record books. ... When you look at just productivity, you'd have to rank Tony with anybody I've ever coached.''
All this makes the quarterback issue less thorny. After the departure last year of Akili Smith, Feeley seized the No. 1 job, and the junior from Ontario, Ore., boasts a touchdown/interception ratio of 14/5.
But he's been hearing footsteps lately.
"When he came out of high school,'' Bellotti said of Harrington, who was ranked No. 8 among prep QB prospects in 1996, "he had never lifted weights -- he could not bench-press his weight.''
Injuries delayed his progress in his first two years in Eugene, but Harrington has made the most out his slender opportunities this season.
"Probably what's occurred the past couple of weeks has been the result of A.J. getting beat up a little bit,'' Bellotti said. "And Joey's always been mentally with it. He's an intelligent young man; he keeps himself ready.''

Friday, November 6, 1999

Cougs crave dose of unity; Stress stemming from offensive toils needs to be addressed

Dale Grummert

EUGENE, Ore. -- On a football team, internal tensions can rarely be gauged properly during the course of the season. The truth spills out later, when there's nothing at stake. But in the past couple of weeks it appears that Washington State has encountered a touch of emotional static, which may lend a certain impetus to the Cougars' road game at 7 tonight against Oregon.
In a team meeting two Sundays ago, linebacker Steve Gleason evidently aired his concerns about the offense's lack of productivity, which has placed an extra burden on a thin, overtaxed defense.
When the problem deepened last week in a 27-13 loss to Oregon State, Gleason gave reporters a glimpse of his frustration, saying "... We need a little bit of offensive support.'' Defensive end Anthony Adedipe made similar comments.
Hardly inflammatory stuff. But since 1994, when tensions between offense and defense became vividly divisive, WSU coach Mike Price has tried to nip these conflicts in the bud.
The next day, Gleason apologized to the team, according to center Lincoln Walden-Schulz.
"At first it made me mad,'' the senior lineman said. "If he's making 20 tackles a game, killing everybody ... until you achieve the status where you are just dominating the game and doing your job perfectly -- and nobody is perfect -- look in the mirror and see what you can do.
"I can understand he's frustrated. I'm frustrated too, but I try to contain it. That's Gleason. He's a captain, vocalizing. I respect that. I don't take it personally. It's just what he felt at that time.''
Meanwhile, the offense turned its attention to its shortcomings. In the last six quarters, the Cougars, 2-6, have produced nothing but two field goals. Although virtually every offensive player shares in the blame, the crux of the problem seems to be the offensive line's leaky pass protection.
"We've got to start playing more physical,'' offensive-line coach John McDonell said. "We're getting there mentally, getting a little healthier.''
Because of injuries, a remarkable total of 22 Cougar freshmen have seen action this year. Price said that's a personal record. In the Rose Bowl season of 1997, he used one freshman, Lamont Thompson. On the offensive line alone, three rookies have assumed starting roles at various times.
"It's been hard for continuity,'' McDonell said. "The offensive line is a real buddy, partnership kind of position. Continuity is real important.''
For example, Walden-Schulz feels especially confident when fellow senior Mike Schwarz is playing beside him at guard.
"Schwarz is great in the huddle and on the line,'' he said. "He's been here for five years and he knows everything inside and out. It's so much easier when he's in there. Sometimes he even makes the call (on adjustments at the line of scrimmage), because he sees it before I do.''
The linemen have done a reasonably good job of opening holes for freshman running back Deon Burnett, whose 5.5-yard average per carry ranks third in the Pac-10 among backs with more than 450 yards.
Yet the Cougs have given up 26 sacks, and their yardage total is second-to-last in the conference.
"We're banged up, so we're not going into the game feeling fresh and wanting to hit and fly around as we did earlier in the season,'' Walden-Schulz said. "As bad as we're doing, we're still getting Deon over 100 the last four weeks.''
Unless a team boasts a superlative quarterback, offensive-line problems tend to snowball: A sack or a false-start penalty on first down encourages the defense to blitz on second down as well.
"It's the situations we get ourselves in -- where we've got to pass,'' Walden-Schulz said. "The defense knows that, and they can tee off.''
By the same token, one big play chastens the defense and buys breathing room for the next few plays.
So a little offensive improvement goes a long way. That's what the Cougars will aim for tonight -- vocally on one side of the ball, tacitly on the other.
NOTES: Backup defensive tackle Joey Hollenbeck made the trip, despite concerns over some type of heart disrhythm that he experienced during a class this week. Price said initial medical tests revealed no problem with his heart. ... The Cougars dispensed with their usual Friday visit to the game site, instead practicing in Pullman before their late-afternoon departure. ... Strong safety Earl Riley, still bothered by a variety of injuries, isn't scheduled to start but should see significant playing time. Torry Hollimon will again start in his place.

Sunday, November 7, 1999

Cougars slip into free fall; WSU;s mistakes across the board quickly point Ducks toward runaway

Dale Grummert

EUGENE, Ore. -- Their best play came courtesy of a court injunction: a punt-block by a player whose ineligibility had been neutralized by a restraining order against the NCAA.
For once, the law was on the Cougars' side. But nothing else was.
Mixing bad gambles, bad positioning and bad luck, Washington State gave out touchdowns in bunches and watched their season begin to spin away Saturday night, losing 52-10 to precise, quick-striking Oregon.
The Cougars, 2-7, who in recent weeks had been stubborn if nothing else, toppled easily this time, spreading their folly so equitably that it left no possibility of the type of veiled finger-pointing that had punctuated the previous week's loss to Oregon State.
The offense, evidently fed up with its murky, conservative play, loosened up its game plan, throwing deeper and less cautiously -- and wound up repeating its picturesque blunders of 1998.
The defense, rather than waiting for fatigue to take hold this time, faltered early and often while giving up 487 yards, including 239 via the arm of sophomore Joey Harrington and 125 via the sweeps and plunges of tailback Reuben Droughns.
"We're letting down in critical situations," WSU safety Torry Hollimon said. "That's what it breaks down to -- making the right play, catching the ball, making the block. Whatever it may be, we're just not getting it done."
And the evening had started off so auspiciously for the Cougars, with a first-quarter coup by Anthony Matthews, the sophomore who had sued the NCAA in September in an effort to overturn an eligibility ruling. A court order has given him at least temporary clearing to play.
His block of a punt by Kurtis Doerr gave WSU possession on the Duck 6-yard line -- alas, not close enough. Two pallid running plays and a false-start penalty later, the Cougs settled for a 25-yard field goal.
"I said before the game we need to keep our composure on offense, snap the ball on the right snap count, stay onsides, hang on to the football, don't turn it over," WSU coach Mike Price said. "Then we have a great opportunity down there, and went offsides."
So much for the Cougar high point. Oregon then scored 35 straight points, the game ending comically with the teams trading touchdowns in the final 24 seconds.
"Everybody comes to practice, everybody has a lot of intensity, everybody's trying to work on their techniques," Hollimon said, "and it just seems like -- it's not coming together."
The Cougar defense would have had an even longer evening if not for linebacker Steve Gleason, who made 13 tackles, including two for losses.
"They threw a couple of plays in there we hadn't seen," Gleason said. "It took us a while to adjust to them. Also, they have a pretty diverse offense, and it's tough to remember all those plays."
Derien Latimer, breaking free of the obscurity of his UO fullback role, caught a 28-yard TD pass from Harrington in the first quarter, and later twisted out of a Jesse Ratcliff tackle to turn a fourth-and-1 dive into a 36-yard TD in the second period.
That's when the Cougs snapped. On the first play of their next series, linebacker Matt Smith tipped a Steve Birnbaum pass and Michael Fletcher intercepted, returning to the 9. Droughns scored from the 4 to make it 21-3.
Birnbaum gave way to Paul Mencke in the second half; the quarterbacks combined for 25-for-40 passing but threw one critical interception apiece.
The Ducks, 6-3 overall and 4-2 in the Pac-10, became eligible for a bowl and claimed their 13th straight home victory before a crowd of 44,090 on a pleasant if somewhat windy evening at Autzen Stadium.
The lopsided game was a relief for the Ducks, whose four previous games had gone down to the wire.
"It's good to have a game that we can enjoy," Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. "It's really nice to play everybody and not have our starters out there for 60 minutes getting banged up."
The Cougars fell to 1-5 in league, lost their final chance for a winning season and dropped their eighth straight road game.
Harrington, named the Oregon starter over incumbent A.J. Feeley earlier in the day, passed 15-for-24 for three touchdowns.
"He placed the ball real well," Price said. "It's not that he has a big ol' strong arm or anything like that; he just placed the ball. They made plays."
The Cougars' second-quarter problems accelerated when they bit on Harrington's third-and-14 pump fake and Keenan Howry sprang open for a 28-yard scoring catch.
That made it 28-3 and, capping the first half aptly, the Cougs' Rian Lindell narrowly missed a 54-yard field-goal attempt as time expired.

Washington St.ƒ3ƒƒ0ƒƒ0ƒƒ7--10
Oregonƒ7ƒ21ƒƒ3ƒ21--52
First Quarter
WSU--FG 25 Lindell, 7:38
Ore--Latimer 28 pass from Harrington (Frankel kick), 10:18
Second Quarter
Ore--Latimer 35 run (Frankel kick), 8:23
Ore--Droughns 4 run (Frankel kick), 9:31
Ore--Howry 28 pass from Harrington (Frankel kick), 13:56
Third Quarter
Ore--FG 18 Frankel, 7:46
Fourth Quarter
Ore--Droughns 52 pass from Harrington (Frankel kick), 00:15
Ore--Harrington 8 run (Frankel kick), 5:38
WSU--Shavies 9 pass from Mencke (Lindell kick), 14:36
Ore--Naggi 47 fumble return (Frankel kick), 14:59
A--44,090
WSU ƒOre
First downsƒƒƒaa15 aƒƒƒaƒ24
Rushes-yardsƒƒ20-30 aƒ44-228
Passingƒƒƒa275 aƒƒƒa259
Comp-Att-Int25-40-2 a26-17-0
Return Yardsƒƒƒa175 aƒƒƒƒa164
Punts-Avg.ƒ5-44.8 aƒ3-24.3
Fumbles-Lostƒƒaƒ2-1 aƒƒaƒ1-0
Penalties-Yardsƒƒa11-75 aƒƒa9-86
Time of Possessionƒƒ25:22 aƒƒ34:38
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Washington St., Burnett 13-25, Hawkins 1-7, Mencke 3-5, Arzu 1-2. Oregon, Droughns 23-123, Latimer 3-55, Ho-Ching 11-41, Cooper 3-8.
PASSING--Washington St., Birnbaum 13-20-1-118, Mencke 12-20-1-157. Oregon, Harrington 15-24-0-239, Feeley 2-2-0-20.
RECEIVING--Washington St., Henderson 7-51, Williams 4-71, Taylor 4-49, Nettles 4-46. Oregon, Howry 4-68, Hartley 4-39, Tucker 3-21, Peelle 2-12.

Monday, November 8, 1999

Oregon defender Saul Patu brings down Washington State running back Deon Burnett. The Ducks bottled up the Cougar offense in a 52-10 win.

The Ducks' new website: football

Dale Grummert

EUGENE, Ore. -- They still have a joint here called Track Town Pizza. Their sports page still devotes all of Page 3 to the state cross-country meet. They still have a bar and grill called Joggers, though the carrot juice that sits before every "jogger'' at, say, midnight after a Ducks football game is crowned by a curious head of foam.
Downtown near the Saturday Market, they still have the most inexhaustible tribe of hand-drummers in the first or second world: an ever-changing, all-comers array of bongo- and conga-beaters, the spiritual sons and daughters of Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, pounding and kneading and slapping for hours at a time. Drummers come and go, but the beat stays the same.
But all bets are off. Football has taken hold in Track Town. Spikes are giving way to cleats -- or rather they are coexisting in relative peace, along with sandals and espradilles and whatever else they wear in this increasingly diverse and rhythmic little pocket of the world.
This was such a show. Or it would have been, if the Cougars had cooperated.
For one thing, Autzen Stadium will get the Oscar this year for Best Use of a Scoreboard Video Screen. Before the Ducks make their grand entry, the screen shows a live shot of the players waiting preorgasmically at the mouth of the stadium tunnel, their fluorescent green helmets bobbing up and down while the P.A. system blasts the heaviest dance beat this side of your favorite neighborhood car stereo. This goes on for a teasing eternity before the Ducks are announced and come pouring deliriously into the stadium.
And, yeah, that was pretty much the climax Saturday night.
Washington State players were hardly oblivious to this excitement: the music, the packed stadium, the patches of vivid green and electric yellow under the stadium lights. They seemed to love it. They seemed as amped for this game as a banged-up, star-crossed road team with a 2-6 record can be.
Even Mike Price, who was about to watch a nightmare, thought the pregame atmosphere was "electric ... about as good as it gets.''
And 13 seconds into the thing, the Cougars had already jammed into reverse -- had already committed two penalties: a holding infraction on the kickoff return and a false start on first down. True, Autzen Stadium is becoming notorious for drowning out the opponent's snap count. But on the first play from scrimmage? After the Cougars had practiced all week in simulated din?
The 52-10 verdict underscored how deftly Oregon has capitalized on its surprising Rose Bowl coup of 1994, and how poorly Washington State has done the same with its 1997 coup.
The Ducks operated as rhythmically as those downtown street drummers -- in the timing of their blitzes, in the precision of their routes, in the way their pass protection flared around the quarterback, as if echoing the curvaceous, saddle-like configuration of the stadium.
This is what the Cougars lack: rhythm, continuity, the luxury to leave your conga without the show coming to a halt. The lineup on the WSU offensive line has been so disrupted by injuries, and the fill-ins are so young, that every possession presents a new adventure.
What Price finds especially frustrating, and what he seems to think is unprecedented in his 30-year coaching career, is the Cougars' inability, particularly up front, to adjust to simple defensive formations and ploys that they hadn't specifically addressed in practice that week.
And to think the Cougs still have three games left. How much of this can they take?
Price has long predicted that the balance of power in the Pac-10 would move away from the urban centers, and that seems to be happening. Not only are the Ducks exploiting this trend, but so is their long-suffering enemy.
In the hour before kickoff, Duck fans at Autzen listened to the radio broadcast of the Oregon State-California game 40 miles up the road. When the Beavers did something good, they would smile affectionately, as if their heifer had won best-of-show at the county fair.
When Oregon State's victory was announced, the cheers drowned out the boos. The Beavs had clinched their first winning season in three decades. Is it vaguely possible -- and heaven knows this is difficult to imagine in Washington -- that the electric atmosphere at Autzen was, in part, a swell of state pride?
For the Cougars, maybe this is long-range reason for hope. If it's true that the center of power in the Pac-10 is moving north, perhaps someday, someday, it will arrive in Pullman.
But don't hold your breath here in the next three weeks.

COUGAR NOTES -- Leaford Hackett, who missed the Oregon game with a sprained ankle, is doubtful for Saturday's home game against USC. He suffered the injury when he stumbled on a stairway Thursday. Also doubtful is strong safety Earl Riley, whose latest injury is a separated shoulder.... Price said Steve Birnbaum is still the starting quarterback, but Paul Mencke will get more repetitions in practice this week and will probably see a meaningful chunk of action.... The Cougars' flight home was delayed by fog. Scheduled to arrive at Lewiston, they landed instead at Spokane, reaching Pullman at about 4 a.m. Sunday.

Thursday, November 11, 1999

Trojans can sympathize with Cougs

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- For decades, Washington State football players have tried to be like USC Trojans. And now they've succeeded.
Like USC, they're 1-5 in the Pac-10 and playing for pride. They're injury-plagued, turnover-prone and bedeviled by penalties. The prince and the pauper are in the same boat, and it's not the boat either of them had visualized.
If there's anything more puzzling than WSU's two-year free fall from its 1998 Rose Bowl appearance, it's the similar swoon of the Trojans, who have lost five straight games, don't seem to have a quarterback, and lack the physical clout that was the trademark of their glory years.
The Cougars and Trojans will play Saturday at Pullman in a game that ABC will (probably reluctantly) televise at 4 p.m.
Like the Cougars, who plan to call on Paul Mencke if Steve Birnbaum struggles, the Trojans are facing uncertainties at quarterback, where Mike Van Raaphorst was replaced last week by John Fox, a 1997 starter who has been playing linebacker of all things. The Trojans' problems began in the third game of the season when Carson Palmer injured a shoulder.
"Not to take anything away from the quarterbacks, Fox and Van Raaphorst, because they're busting their tail, I'm sure,'' Washington State coach Mike Price said, "but I think they'd probably be a little bit different team with Carson Palmer.''
Unlike the Cougars, USC (3-6 overall) has avoided lopsided losses. But, haunted by penalties (755 yards' worth in nine games), injuries and, lately, turnovers, the Trojans have lacked chemistry and crunch-time heroics.
Yet "the enthusiasm of this football team under the circumstances continues to amaze me,'' said USC coach Paul Hackett, echoing Price's sentiments about his own team. "We're a struggling football team, but they are continuing to work as hard as they possibly can.''
They still have certain athletes who fit the SC mold, such as Chad Morton, who has rushed for 797 yards, and Travis Claridge, the offensive guard from Vancouver, Wash., who has started in all 46 of his games since his true-freshman season.
And despite USC's quarterback problems, wide receivers Windrell Hayes, Kareem Kelly and R. Jay Soward have stayed among the conference's top 10 in receptions.
"If they were a track team, they'd probably be in the Olympics,'' Price said. "They're scary. I mean, scary. You've got to swarm them when they do catch it. You've got to change up coverages, bump them sometimes, play off, double them -- give them different looks.''
Ask him about USC's defense, which is statistically mediocre, and Price assumes the same tone.
"They look really good to me,'' he said. "What, am I nuts or something? Their defense is solid, mean, tough ... (with) two linebackers (Zeke Moreno and Markus Steele) that are awesome. (Cornerback) Antoine Simmons is playing great.''
The Cougars would probably benefit from harsh weather. Never before has USC played at Pullman this late in the year.
On the other hand, the Trojans have lost here only twice. At the moment, that's one of their few links to their glorious past.

Saturday, November 13, 1999

Gearing for season's last home hurrah; Cougars sure to be emotionally energized as they play host to Trojans in Martin Stadium finale

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Those three initials, USC, still carry a coded message to 19-year-old nerve centers. This is the seniors' last home appearance. Television cameras will be lurking about.
So the Washington State Cougars won't have much trouble rousing their emotions for today's game at 4 p.m. at Martin Stadium, despite the teams' 5-13 combined record and their relegation to the bottom rung of a rickety conference.
"It really does mean something to (the seniors) to play at Martin Stadium,'' Washington State coach Mike Price said. "(Joe) Gecas is going to be so pumped up, (Steve) Gleason is going to be so pumped up, Grady Emmerson and those guys, they're going to be jumping out of their skins, let alone playing USC, let alone playing on ABC television.''
Yet emotion has never been the problem for this team. The problem has been reason, induction, conditioned reflex. That was especially evident last week in the Cougars' 52-10 loss at Oregon.
Example: The Cougars call a basic running play for Deon Burnett, and Oregon switches from an eagle to an Okie defense.
"To run a dive play against an Okie defense is pretty basic,'' Price said, "But they hadn't run that Okie defense before. We run the dive and we block it like an eagle defense, and there's a defensive end waiting there to make the play. All you've got to do is run base-base, block out and, boom, hand it to Deon and we're on the road. We're not adjusting right at the time.''
That will be an issue today against a strong USC defensive line led by All-Pac-10 tackle Ennis Davis. The Trojans are 3-6 but scarcely lack talent, and all of their losses have been by 10 points or fewer.
The Cougars, 2-7, will aim for a repeat of a 1986 game at Pullman, where a team that would finish 3-7-1 waxed USC 34-14. Only one other time have the Trojans lost here.
Early in the Cougars' calamity at Oregon, an interior-line mistake undermined the Cougars' first-and-goal play from the 6-yard line. On second down, Burnett cut the wrong way. On third down, the tight end jumped offsides. Pushed 5 yards back, the Cougars then failed to respond to an adjustment in the secondary, and a lob pass went nowhere.
So the Cougs kicked a field goal, then watched Oregon score 45 straight points.
"See, everything has a story,'' Price said. "Isn't that amazing? Football's not like that. It's hit it up in there and play football. Let it rip. I don't know if we're giving our kids too much to think about, or we're thinking about it too much.''
The WSU defense seems to have larger circuitry, but even that unit reached its capacity against Oregon. The Cougars will try to dictate the action against a fast, mistake-prone USC offense led by a rusty but feisty quarterback, John Fox. He was named the starter over Mike Van Raaphorst.
"I think what you need to do is confuse him a little bit, because he might not be experienced,'' Price said. "I don't know if hitting him hard, and doing a war dance over the top of him, is going to shake him up. He's kind of a competitive guy, and he might feed off that kind of demonstration.''
Again, brainwork is the key, partly because the Cougar D lacks the depth to control such variables as fatigue.
As for the emotional side of things, the Cougs seem to have that sussed. If tensions between the offense and defense were beginning to rise two weeks ago, as reflected in a few mild off-the-cuff comments by linebacker Gleason, the Cougars now appear to want unity at all costs.
"Obviously things are disappointing for us, but we're past that,'' Gleason said. "They way I look at it, we've got three weeks (remaining in the season), and these are some of my best friends. One way or another, we're going to stay best friends.''

Sunday, November 14, 1999

Cougs run into new roadblock; Botched fourth-quarter scoring opportunity takes wind out of WSU comeback

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- To their undying credit, they found a different way to lose. They improved in countless ways, and they nearly erased a 17-point deficit. But they still couldn't (a) score a gimme or (b) impress a certain officiating crew.
Failing to score on a disputed fourth-and-inches play early in the fourth quarter, the Washington State Cougars still pulled two second-half touchdowns out of their hat Saturday night and made their latest loss to USC a bit more palatable, 31-28.
That won't stop everyone from wondering why they can't make hay from a first-and-goal situation from the 2-yard line. But at least they have a familiar target of blame: the same officiating crew -- minus two key members -- that had awarded Arizona a game-winning Hail Mary reception here Sept. 25.
"I wish you wouldn't have told me that," said quarterback Steve Birnbaum, who felt persecuted enough as it was.
To a man, the Cougars seem to believe Jeremy Thielbahr had clearly crossed the goal line on the last play of that uncanny goal-line series, on a fourth-down plunge that had begun perhaps 3 inches out. Officials disagreed, leaving USC with its 31-21 lead.
"The replay obviously showed Jeremy got in," safety Billy Newman said. "That's the difference in the ballgame right there. Players are supposed to make the difference, not the officials. And I think that's a couple of times this year that some of the officials have made the difference.
"I talked to Jeremy after the play, and he said his whole upper body was in. How an official can miss a call like that, I don't know."
The Cougars, 2-8 this year and 2-16 in the last 14 months, are slowly learning that they cannot leave themselves, or anyone else, a margin for error.
"We can't let the refs be the one who make the decision," Washington State coach Mike Price said. "We need to make sure there's no question about it. They (the Trojans) just overpowered us (on the goal-line stand), and we don't have the type of back or athlete to jump over the top (of the pile). Deon (Burnett), he's not very good at that. Thiehlbahr isn't. (Adam) Hawkins isn't."
It was a decisive flaw, considering that WSU outgained the Trojans 420-318, rang up 25 first downs to their 16 and were aided by 140 yards in USC penalties.
Birnbaum passed 24-for-42 for 284 yards in his final Martin Stadium appearance, hitting Nian Taylor for two 5-yard touchdowns in the second half as the Cougars ate into a 31-14 deficit.
But it's such a struggle. The Cougars did much of their damage while free-wheeling in their comeback mode. That they even possessed a comeback mode was a mark of progress, but the offense and defense combined for five offsides penalties in the first quarter, and the Cougs again languished in the pivotal third quarter.
"The third quarter I thought turned the tide in the ballgame," said USC coach Paul Hackett, whose team, 4-6, broke a five-game losing streak.
The Cougars' low point came when blitzing safety Antuan Simmons bulled into Birnbaum in the Cougar end zone, and the quarterback avoided the safety by throwing a blooper toward the sideline. USC cornerback Kris Richard lunged in front of Taylor for the interception and loped 6 yards into the end zone to create the 31-14 margin.
"We had full protection, and there was a little pressure," Birnbaum said. "I looked one way and saw the guy was covered. I probably should have thrown it away that way. I was looking back to the second receiver, and he wasn't open. As I was throwing it away, I got hit and the ball fluttered in the air."
The Washington State defense struggled early, particularly against tailback Chad Morton, who finished with 117 rushing yards and scored twice in the opening period to stake the Trojans to a 14-7 lead.
The Cougar D played strongly thereafter, perhaps stirred by the absence of linebacker Steve Gleason, the leading tackler in the Pac-10, who sprained an ankle late in the first quarter. Initial X-rays indicated no break, and Gleason said he will return for the Apple Cup against Washington on Saturday at Seattle.
"When Steve went out, him being a senior playing his last game (at home), we just wanted to go out there and play hard for him, and for ourselves," said freshman Marcus Trufant, who played another solid game at cornerback.
Platooning their defensive linemen in order to muster a semblance of pass-rush, the Cougars held new quarterback John Fox, making his first start since 1997, to 117 passing yards. Increasing their use of nickel coverage after Gleason's departure, Cougar defensive backs held USC's speedy receivers in check, aside from a 41-yard reception by R. Jay Soward to set up Morton's second TD.
Despite the Cougars' problems in short-yardage situations, Burnett rushed for 96 yards, while Marcus Williams submitted his best game as a Cougar, catching seven passes for 121 yards.
But the Cougars left themselves too little time for their comeback, getting possession with 13 seconds left and advancing to midfield before time expired on a long incomplete pass.
That's when it hit: From the Cougars' perspective, they had been foiled by that goal-line fiasco early in the fourth quarter.
"At that point, it wasn't as frustrating as it is now," Newman said. "We all believed 100 percent that we were going to bounce back and win the game. We were having fun on the sidelines. Everyone out there was having fun tonight. And to get this result is really disappointing."
NOTES -- The two officials who had signaled touchdown on Arizona's Hail Mary were the ones missing from an otherwise identical crew this time. ... The Cougars' second TD came on a double pass, Birnbaum throwing an out to Collin Henderson, who absorbed a hit by Darrell Rideaux as he uncorked a post throw to Williams. The play is designed for an over-the-shoulder catch or a comeback route, and it turned out to be the latter, with Williams fooling Simmons to double back for the catch. ... Newman made 12 tackles for the Cougs, while safety Ifeanyi Ohalete made 11 for USC.

Southern Cal14 3 14 0--31
Washington St. 7 7 7 7--28
First Quarter
USC--Morton 7 run (Newbury kick), 10:29.
WSU--Burnett 22 run (Lindell kick), 8:02.
USC--Morton 3 run (Newbury kick), 3:44.
Second Quarter
USC--FG Newbury 34, 12:58.
WSU--Williams 24 pass from Henderson (Lindell kick), 1:54.
Third Quarter
USC--Morton 1 run (Newbury kick), 11:05.
USC--Richard 6 interception return (Newbury kick), 10:02.
WSU--Taylor 5 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 7:36.
Fourth Quarter
WSU--Taylor 5 pass from Birnbaum (Lindell kick), 2:14.
A--23,065.
USC WSU
First downs aa16 a a 25
Rushes-yards 44-201 a32-112
Passing a117 a a 308
Comp-Att-Int12-22-0 25-43-1
Return Yards aa 53 a a86
Punts-Avg. 7-40.7 a6-37.2
Fumbles-Lost a 0-0 a 1-0
Penalties-Yards a15-140a 12-68
Time of Possession 30:48 a 29:12
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--USC, Morton 29-117, McCullough 10-38, Fox 1-37, MacKenzie 4-9. WSU, Burnett 24-96, Henderson 1-11, Birnbaum 3-4, Hawkins 3-1, Thielbahr 1-0.
PASSING--USC, Fox 12-22-0-117. WSU, Birnbaum 24-42-1-284, Henderson 1-1-0-24.
RECEIVING--USC, Hayes 4-24, 3-59, Pierson 1-11, Kelly 1-10, Swanson 1-8, MacKenzie 1-3, Morton 1-2. WSU, Williams 7-121, Zubedi 5-46, Taylor 4-33, Hackett 2-37, Mizin 2-31

Sunday, November 14, 1999

USC 31, WSU 28
Quick fact

The Cougars have been outscored 69-14 in the third quarter, though they scored in that period for the first time in their last six conference games.

Key plays

Chad Morton's up-the-gut runs fuel USC's opening TD drive, which had begun on the Cougar 42-yard line because of WSU's offensive woes and a short punt.
Swift wide receiver R. Jay Soward turns a routine crossing route into a 41-yard gain to set up Morton's second touchdown and a 14-7 USC lead in the second quarter.
The Trojans mount a 92-yard scoring drive to open the second half, with quarterback John Fox breaking a Curtis Holden tackle to sweep for 37 key yards.
To avoid a safety, WSU's Steve Birnbaum looks to unload toward the sideline, but he's hit by Antuon Simmons and the floater is intercepted by Kris Richard. He scores from 6 yards to give the Trojans a 31-14 lead.
Cougars' next game
The Apple Cup against Washington begins at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Seattle.

Monday, November 15, 1999

USC safety David Gibson tries to bring down Washington State running back Deon Burnett in the first quarter. Burnett broke the tackle and scored on a 22-yard run in WSU's 27-24 loss Saturday

November sunshine seems just one more WSU blessing gone awry

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- First, of course, the announcer introduced the seniors making their last home appearance, starting aptly with Eboni Wilson, in street clothes. He was once considered the most diligent player in the program. His mailing address was the Washington State weight room. He was strong as a Sasquatch, and just as rare. He never started a game. After many, many injuries, doctors detected a congenital spinal defect and he was done, just before his senior season.
That was Rare Sight No. 1 Saturday in the Cougars' 31-28 loss to USC: Eboni Wilson getting applause.
When they introduced Leaford Hackett, he could barely hobble out of the tunnel. He once considered himself indestructible -- never missed a football game in his life until last season. A week and a half ago, not long after recovering from a shoulder injury, he stumbled on a stairway and sprained an ankle. How he caught two passes for 37 yards Saturday is anybody's guess.
That was Rare Sight No. 2: Leaford Hackett limping.
Steve Gleason drew the biggest applause during the senior to-do, as befitting the leading tackler in the conference, but he would last only 11 minutes before bashing an ankle while trying to prevent USC's second touchdown. He missed the rest of the game.
That was Rare Sight No. 3: Steve Gleason going down for the count.
What else?
Well, Nian Taylor showed up for interviews. The flanker had been stonewalling us all season, no doubt because his senior year -- supposedly a bonus season, granted by the NCAA when it modified its Proposition 48 policy -- had turned out so ... melancholy isn't the word to use in regard to Taylor. But so exasperating. All those drops. All those lowlights, such as his little dead-ball shove Saturday of Antuon Simmons, the penalty for which backed the Cougars to the 2-yard line and set up a blitz and interception.
And now here he was, smiling for the cameras, his ears bearing more studs than a 16-wheeler in Nome. "It's my last home game, so I figured I'd come chat with you guys,'' he said. More to the point, he had caught two touchdown passes -- another rare sight.
Really, it was an uncanny day. For the first time all season, the Cougars' red-zone magic, which had seemed all the more magical for being the offense's sole claim to fame, abandoned them utterly on one second-half possession. It wasn't simply a matter of failing to score from first-and-goal at the 2-yard line. Before that, USC had handed them a pass-interference penalty. In all, the Cougars failed to score on seven straight plays inside the 6.
In their long history of disdain for power football, this was a red-letter moment.
In a way, they found vindication by giving up. The next time they reached fourth-and-3, they fled power football as far as they could flee it. They lined up with five wide receivers, and Steve Birnbaum fired to the widest of them, Marcus Williams. Complete for 16 yards.
Moments later, on third-and-1 -- again five wide-outs. One of them was Hackett, he of the distinguished hobble. He didn't even run a route. He just stood there and caught the ball, then winced away the pain in his ankle as he scurried for a first down.
Not much later, it was third-and-10. The Cougars lined up in their strangest formation ever -- six wide receivers. Was football history being made? Alas, no. They had 12 men on the field. They called a timeout before the flag was thrown, whisked the extra flanker off the field, and completed a pass for a first down.
Anyway, they conjured up a touchdown with 2:14 left, to create the respectable final score. And this sign of life from the offense, however weird, was its most encouraging development in weeks.
On the final possession, with no time on the clock, Birnbaum dropped back for a desperation pass from midfield. Unable to sidestep the rush, he failed to get off a proper Hail Mary. In the abstract sense, which is the best way to appreciate Birnbaum, it was a gorgeous pass, a perfect spiral cutting through the evening mist and the artificial light. It fell incomplete at about the 15.
Thus ends the busiest season ever for Martin Stadium -- and the dryest. There were seven WSU games in its home venue, and there wasn't a single drop of rain or snow. The temperature at kickoff Saturday was a November record at Martin Stadium -- supposedly 74 degrees, though the measurement was probably taken inside Nian Taylor's helmet. In any case, it was warm.
And 2-5. That was the Cougars' record in those home games. They had envisioned this as a pivotal season in the history of the program, a season that harvested all the fruits of the 1998 Rose Bowl.
But in the diligence of Eboni Wilson, in the bonus presence of Nian Taylor, in the endless displays of persistence by players like Hackett and Gleason and Birnbaum, and finally in this bounty of November sunshine, the Cougars were left again and again with an unsettling sense of waste.
NOTES -- The WSU injury list is full of players who are "questionable'' for the Apple Cup at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Washington, but most of them will likely find a way on the field. The list includes Hackett, Gleason, Earl Riley, Torry Hollimon, Brad Philley, Reed Raymond, Wendell Smith and Jason Gesser.... Cougars coach Mike Price said Sunday he watched the replay of WSU's disputed fourth-and-goal play early in the fourth quarter, and said Jeremy Thiehlbahr did cross the goal line. Officials had ruled otherwise.... Price said he won't make any announcement this week on whether he plans to use Gesser, the backup quarterback who has missed eight games with a thumb injury. He did say Gesser won't usurp Birnbaum's starting role.

Monday, November 15, 1999

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK/DALE GRUMMERT ... Cougs can't run on solar power

Grummert is a Tribune sportswriter

PULLMAN -- First, of course, the announcer introduced the seniors making their last home appearance, starting aptly with Eboni Wilson, in street clothes. He was once considered the most diligent player in the program. His mailing address was the Washington State weight room. He was strong as a Sasquatch, and just as rare. He never started a game. After many, many injuries, doctors detected a congenital spinal defect and he was done, just before his senior season.

That was Rare Sight No. 1 Saturday in the Cougars' 31-28 loss to USC: Eboni Wilson getting applause.

When they introduced Leaford Hackett, he could barely hobble out of the tunnel. He once considered himself indestructible -- never missed a football game in his life until last season. A week and a half ago, not long after recovering from a shoulder injury, he stumbled on a stairway and sprained an ankle. How he caught two passes for 37 yards Saturday is anybody's guess.

That was Rare Sight No. 2: Leaford Hackett limping.

Steve Gleason drew the biggest applause during the senior to-do, as befitting the leading tackler in the conference, but he would last only 11 minutes before bashing an ankle while trying to prevent USC's second touchdown. He missed the rest of the game.

That was Rare Sight No. 3: Steve Gleason going down for the count.

What else?

Well, Nian Taylor showed up for interviews. The flanker had been stonewalling us all season, no doubt because his senior year -- supposedly a bonus season, granted by the NCAA when it modified its Proposition 48 policy -- had turned out so ... melancholy isn't the word to use in regard to Taylor. But so exasperating. All those drops. All those lowlights, such as his little dead-ball shove Saturday of Antuon Simmons, the penalty for which backed the Cougars to the 2-yard line and set up a blitz and interception.

And now here he was, smiling for the cameras, his ears bearing more studs than a 16-wheeler in Nome. "It's my last home game, so I figured I'd come chat with you guys,'' he said. More to the point, he had caught two touchdown passes -- another rare sight.

Really, it was an uncanny day. For the first time all season, the Cougars' red-zone magic, which had seemed all the more magical for being the offense's sole claim to fame, abandoned them utterly on one second-half possession. It wasn't simply a matter of failing to score from first-and-goal at the 2-yard line. Before that, USC had handed them a pass-interference penalty. In all, the Cougars failed to score on seven straight plays inside the 6.

In their long history of disdain for power football, this was a red-letter moment.

In a way, they found vindication by giving up. The next time they reached fourth-and-3, they fled power football as far as they could flee it. They lined up with five wide receivers, and Steve Birnbaum fired to the widest of them, Marcus Williams. Complete for 16 yards.

Moments later, on third-and-1 -- again five wide-outs. One of them was Hackett, he of the distinguished hobble. He didn't even run a route. He just stood there and caught the ball, then winced away the pain in his ankle as he scurried for a first down.

Not much later, it was third-and-10. The Cougars lined up in their strangest formation ever -- six wide receivers. Was football history being made? Alas, no. They had 12 men on the field. They called a timeout before the flag was thrown, whisked the extra flanker off the field, and completed a pass for a first down.

Anyway, they conjured up a touchdown with 2:14 left, to create the respectable final score. And this sign of life from the offense, however weird, was its most encouraging development in weeks.

On the final possession, with no time on the clock, Birnbaum dropped back for a desperation pass from midfield. Unable to sidestep the rush, he failed to get off a proper Hail Mary. In the abstract sense, which is the best way to appreciate Birnbaum, it was a gorgeous pass, a perfect spiral cutting through the evening mist and the artificial light. It fell incomplete at about the 15.

Thus ends the busiest season ever for Martin Stadium -- and the dryest. There were seven WSU games in its home venue, and there wasn't a single drop of rain or snow. The temperature at kickoff Saturday was a November record at Martin Stadium -- supposedly 74 degrees, though the measurement was probably taken inside Nian Taylor's helmet. In any case, it was warm.

And 2-5. That was the Cougars' record in those home games. They had envisioned this as a pivotal season in the history of the program, a season that harvested all the fruits of the 1998 Rose Bowl.

But in the diligence of Eboni Wilson, in the bonus presence of Nian Taylor, in the endless displays of persistence by players like Hackett and Gleason and Birnbaum, and finally in this bounty of November sunshine, the Cougars were left again and again with an unsettling sense of waste.

NOTES -- The WSU injury list is full of players who are "questionable'' for the Apple Cup at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Washington, but most of them will likely find a way on the field. The list includes Hackett, Gleason, Earl Riley, Torry Hollimon, Brad Philley, Reed Raymond, Wendell Smith and Jason Gesser.... Cougars coach Mike Price said Sunday he watched the replay of WSU's disputed fourth-and-goal play early in the fourth quarter, and said Jeremy Thiehlbahr did cross the goal line. Officials had ruled otherwise.... Price said he won't make any announcement this week on whether he plans to use Gesser, the backup quarterback who has missed eight games with a thumb injury. He did say Gesser won't usurp Birnbaum's starting role.

Tuesday, November 16, 1999

Washington coach Rick Neuheisel can't bear to watch as the Huskies fall to UCLA. The loss knocked UW out of the Rose Bowl driver's seat

Huskies lose sense of smell; After blowing game to UCLA, UW sees Rose Bowl as a fading dream heading into Apple Cup vs. WSU

Associated Press

SEATTLE -- The Washington Huskies hung their heads in disappointment. This is not a happy week for them to prepare for the Apple Cup.
"I'm very disappointed, I'm extremely disappointed," quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo said Monday. "We had a chance to be in the driver's seat and now we're not."
"We're all Cal fans this week," said center Kyle Benn. "I think you're going to have about 75,000 Cal fans this week."
Stung by a 23-20 overtime loss to UCLA on Saturday, the Huskies now find themselves longshots at getting to the Rose Bowl. Stanford leads the Pac-10 with a 6-1 record, while Washington is in a tie with Oregon for second place with a 5-2 mark.
It would take a victory by California over Stanford and a Washington victory over Washington State in the Apple Cup this Saturday at Husky Stadium to ensure a Huskies' trip to Pasadena.
"If Cal beats Stanford and everything turns out the way it's supposed to, then I'll get over the UCLA game," said linebacker Lester Towns, one of seven senior starters for Washington. "I've got one more chance at the Rose Bowl. Hopefully, things will turn out right."
They didn't against the Bruins.
UCLA, an 8«-point underdog, temporarily shelved its own disappointing season long enough to beat Washington. Coming off a bye week, the Bruins shut down Tuiasosopo and Washington's option offense.
Tuiasosopo, who was averaging 271.2 yards of total offense, was held to 149 yards.
He refused to blame the defeat on the lingering effects from a bruised hip and backside he suffered in a victory over Stanford two weeks ago.
"I feel pretty good," he said.
The loss ruined what was supposed to be a week of celebration for the Huskies, who had a chance to have a Rose Bowl celebration by beating Washington State.
Now, a loss to the Cougars would ruin Washington's season. The Huskies are facing a WSU team in last place in the Pac-10 with a 1-6 record.
"We've got to get over the hangover effect of the UCLA loss," first-year coach Rick Neuheisel said.
Saturday's game will match two brothers playing for opposing teams. On the Huskies' side is backup tight end Anthony Mizin, a 6-foot-4, 255-pound senior from Aberdeen. For the Cougars, it will be Russell Mizin, Anthony's younger brother and a redshirt freshman who is their starting tight end.
"We've had some pretty good one-on-one basketball tournaments in the backyard," Anthony Mizin said. "This should be a lot of fun."
Washington freshman kicker John Anderson, who tied the school record with a 56-yard field goal to send the UCLA game into overtime, found out on Monday that he had been selected as the Pac-10 special teams player of the week.
"I set a record and it means nothing to me," Anderson said. "I'm glad to make the kick and give the team another chance. But it was a real sober plane trip on the way back from UCLA."
Willie Hurst, Washington's leading rusher this season, is questionable for the WSU game because of an injured shoulder suffered against UCLA. Gerald Harris, the Huskies' No. 2 receiver, missed the UCLA game because of a sore thigh and he's listed as questionable for the Apple Cup.

Lewiston Tribune Online Thursday, November 18, 1999

(Picture not shown — Mike Price watching the team practicing.)

While his colleagues on the other side of the state have long been perceived as aloof if not arrogant, Mike Price's coaching persona has always featured a more player-friendly image. But that contrast has disappeared now that Rick Neuheisel is the Huskies' coach.

Still personable, but no longer unique

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- Mike Price mentioned it briefly and vaguely. For him, this Apple Cup is going to "feel'' different -- at least at the beginning, when he runs onto the field at Husky Stadium and senses the absence of ... what?

Of Don James, perhaps.

Although James retired in 1992, and although his protoge‚ and successor, Jim Lambright, never replicated his success, University of Washington football has, for 25 years, been embodied in James' stoic, mildly haughty image.

He gave Price, as Washington State coach, a clear sense of what he was up against.

And now, in place of James or Lambright, there is this outsider called Rick Neuheisel, a smart, fresh-faced 38-year-old coach who charms, impresses and infuriates by turns.

When the Huskies lured Neuheisel from Colorado in January, Price must have winced. If James gave Husky football a dignity and a stature, he also gave it, at least through Cougar eyes, a corporate, impersonal air that contrasted with Price's breezy accessibility. By stressing what the Huskies failed to stress, Price clarified his role at Washington State and carved out a certain angle in recruiting and public relations.

In Neuheisel, though, Price faces a younger member of his own general species, a coach who is neither a good ol' boy nor a CEO. Like Price, he is a former quarterback (but a better one), an offensive innovator (but a more celebrated one) and, in particular, a "player's coach'' -- whatever that means.

It's partly a device, an image. For Price, that image used to involve motivational skits and after-practice Popsicles. For Neuheisel, it meant guitar-playing and team rafting excursions.

But Price stashed away his stunt costumes a decade ago, and the Huskies have yet to tackle any white-water rapids. Those acoustic-guitar stories at Colorado had left some people with an image of John Denver in coach's shorts -- a highly misleading image.

"Rick's got a bad rap,'' says Troy Taylor, a University of California assistant coach who was part of Neuheisel's staff at Colorado in 1995. "People think of someone who's confident and open to new thoughts and new ideas as not being businesslike. Especially in coaching, people are pretty stuck to tradition and doing things the same way over and over. When someone does something a little different, it kind of rocks the boat. People don't like that.''

Although known for his finesseful, cerebral approach to football, he impressed UW players with his beseeching emotionality in early team meetings, and his practices "are very intense -- they're a lot harder than the game,'' Huskies wide receiver Chris Juergens says. "It was difficult getting used to it, but ... it's helped the team tremendously.''

In part, being a player's coach implies a certain sensitivity, a certain insight into psychology. When the Huskies lost to UCLA last week, possibly knocking them out of the Rose Bowl, Neuheisel's reaction was rather Pricelike.

"We didn't even watch the film,'' Juergens says. "They (the coaches) just wanted us to forget about it. They know when to push us and when not to push us. (Neuheisel) knows we were pretty devastated after this last loss.''

Price's definition of "player's coach'' has evidently become more refined in recent years, particularly after the imbroglios spawned by his promotion of young quarterbacks Drew Bledsoe in 1990 and Ryan Leaf in 1995. Since then, he has placed a greater value on seniority.

"I know a lot of fans are critical of what we're doing,'' he said earlier this season, when vacillating between quarterbacks Steve Birnbaum and Jason Gesser. "They think these guys are just pawns, and you move people around. But we're not in a vacuum. The decisions we make in moving players affect people, and the whole team. I'm certainly not afraid to make a tough decision, but I want it to be an educated tough decision.''

Says Birnbaum, "He appreciates and respects loyalty. When you give him your time, your blood, your sweat, your effort -- especially your effort -- he's going to give something back to you.''

As recruiters, too, both coaches take a personal approach. Neuheisel works the phones doggedly and smoothly -- wants to talk to the athlete, but also to Mom, Dad and Aunt Elsa.

It is here, in the recruiting arena, even more than in the Apple Cup on Saturday, that Price will likely have a different "feel.'' This fall the Huskies have evidently taken an 11-0 lead over WSU in verbal commitments from recruits. In regard to some of these players, the Cougars seem to think their rivals are not being as selective as in the past.

A new brand of Cougar-Husky tension became evident soon after Neuheisel was hired in Seattle, a month before the 1999 signing date. He overdid his recruiting exuberance. Five of his assistants broke an NCAA rule by visiting athletes on a Sunday during "quiet period.'' The school reported the violations to the NCAA and punished the coach by limiting his recruiting visits for the 1999-2000 evaluation period.

While Neuheisel was confessing his staff's mistakes, his successor at Colorado, Gary Barnett, was telling reporters that he planned to send a letter to the NCAA calling for harsh penalties against the Huskies. He said the letter would be signed by three other coaches: Mike Bellotti of Oregon, Sonny Lubick of Colorado State, and Price. Perhaps the letter was never sent.

"To hear all the guys talk about it, there was never such a letter,'' Neuheisel says. "It was more a thing fabricated by the media. Mike told me he never did it, and I've gotten that word from at least one of the other coaches in Mike Bellotti. So I don't know if there ever was one. And if there was, so be it. As far as I'm concerned, that's behind us.''

What lies in front of them, however, is an altered set of dynamics. In player-coach relations, from the first recruiting letter to the nuances of game-day strategy, Price has always painted a clear-cut picture of things: There are Huskies and there are Cougars.

At the moment, it no longer seems that simple.

Friday, November 21, 1999

Cougar rookies wade into rivalry

Dale Grummert

PULLMAN -- With a depth chart that includes almost two dozen freshmen, many of them from California, the Washington State Cougars won't bring an especially strong sense of Apple Cup history into the 92nd edition of the grudge match at Washington.
Sometimes, that's not necessary.
Two years ago in Seattle, WSU rookie safety Lamont Thompson seemed more homesick than Husky-crazed; he was worried about confirming his postgame flight for Thanksgiving vacation in Richmond, Calif.
But he made three interceptions in the Cougars' most raucous Apple Cup victory ever.
That seems ages ago. Moved to cornerback early this season to fill a Cougar void, WSU's No. 2 all-time pass-stealer fell into a slump and out of the starting lineup.
He will start for the first time in four games Saturday as he makes his first appearance at Husky Stadium since that surprising freshman performance.
"He's starting to play better,'' Washington State coach Mike Price said. "When he comes out there, sees the surroundings and has the same feeling, he's going to be quite confident. He's going to be more excited than the first time he was there.''
The rangy junior will start at strong safety because Earl Riley hasn't fully recovered from his separated shoulder. Thompson's natural position is free safety, from where he has logged most of his 13 interceptions. But sophomore Billy Newman's stellar play at that position has locked Thompson out.
When Washington's first-year coach Rick Neuheisel was asked about the Cougar defense this week, he said, "Steve Gleason is clearly the heart and soul of the defense, although No. 10 -- is that Thompson? -- the free safety ... looks like a great player for them.''
Someone told him No. 10 was Newman.
PRE-INITIATED -- Some WSU freshmen don't need an Apple Cup lesson anyway.
Russell Mizin of Aberdeen, Wash., who seized the Cougars' starting tight-end role in the fourth game of the season, has a senior brother who plays the same position for Washington.
Anthony Mizin has caught three passes as a backup tight end for the Huskies. His younger brother has made six receptions for the Cougs.
Also, WSU freshman defensive tackle Ing Aleaga is the brother of Ink Aleaga, an all-conference linebacker for the Huskies earlier this decade.
The younger Aleaga will get his third career start Saturday.
"He's had a great week of practice and he looks healthy,'' Price said. "He just looks like a man on a mission. I think he knows a little about the history of the game.''
Another example of an Apple Cup-savvy freshman is Collin Henderson, who again will start at slotback in place of Leaford Hackett. Henderson's father Jerry was a WSU quarterback from 1966 to '68, when the Cougs beat the Huskies two out of the three years.
Cougar senior safety Torry Hollimon's brother Terry played for Washington in 1994 and '95. The younger Hollimon, though, is nursing shoulder and neck injuries and won't start.
RUSH HOUR -- Seattle commuters aren't the only ones fed up with congested traffic in the city. That's one reason WSU, as in 1997, will dispense with its customary Friday-afternoon practice at the game site.
"It's just a hassle -- it takes you so long to do it,'' Price said. "It's windy, cold, wet. You don't get much done on the field. ... It's three and a half hours just to see the field.''
Rain is indeed the forecast in Seattle today and Saturday. Kickoff is 12:30 p.m.
The Cougars will practice in Pullman today before embarking to Seattle by bus.
ETCETERA -- Nian Taylor needs 74 yards to tie WSU's career reception yardage record. Hugh Campbell holds the record of 2,452. Taylor bruised a shin in practice Wednesday but appears OK. ... Cougar linebacker Gleason, because he's a senior, will probably start, despite his high ankle sprain. If he can't continue playing, he will be sorely missed, but the Cougs do welcome back strongside linebacker Raonall Smith, who has looked strong in practice since returning from his knee injury. ... Jason Gesser, sidelined for seven games with a thumb injury, will be the Cougars' No. 2 quarterback behind Steve Birnbaum. Paul Mencke has been moved back to wide receiver for this game. ... Deon Burnett needs 212 yards to tie the Pac-10 freshman rushing record of 1,069, set in 1977 by Darrin Nelson of Stanford.... FOX Sports Northwest will televise the Cougars' finale Nov. 27 at Hawaii. The game starts at 8 p.m. PST.

Saturday, November 20, 1999

Something to ponder; Cougars take long, hard look at arch-nemesis, coming-of-age QB

DALE GRUMMERT

SEATTLE -- By mid-afternoon or so, the state of Washington's favorite football game will have restored its usual simplicity, its rawness, its impassioned little story lines.

But for now, this is the thinking man's Apple Cup.

The University of Washington's new coach, Rick Neuheisel, and particularly its new quarterback, Marques Tuiasosopo, have complicated things by posing a unique hybrid of offense, containing one-back, two-back and option tactics of various flavors and hues.

Until the usual Apple Cup craziness takes hold, Washington State's young, battered and shallow defense has no choice but to reflect and study and think -- all the things that defenses don't like to do, especially in a cross-state rivalry game.

TOO-ee-ah-so-SO-po.

Even his name forces you to slow down, study the components, think in different channels. When he was a faceless backup to Brock Huard, it was no big deal. Even when his father, Manu Tuiasosopo, played for the Seattle Seahawks two decades ago, it was no big deal. Dad was only a defensive tackle; everyone butchered his name.

But the son is a quarterback, and suddenly a very good one. Playing behind Huard for two seasons, he barely attracted notice. Even the Huskies didn't seem to realize the bombshell in their midst. There are seven players pictured on their media guide, and he's not one of them.

No one quite realized the breadth of Tuiasosopo's talents until he rolled up 509 yards in total offense in a win over Stanford three weeks ago, becoming the first NCAA Division I player ever to top 300 yard passing and 200 yards rushing in a game.

That performance put the Huskies in command of the Rose Bowl race. Last week, when the 6-foot-2, 215-pound junior quarterback proved mortal, so did the Huskies. Limited by bruises on his hips and buttocks, Tuiasosopo threw an interception in overtime as Washington lost 23-20 to UCLA.

With the quarterback still presumably ailing to some degree, the Huskies, 5-2 in the Pac-10, cling to their Rose Bowl hopes but need to beat the Cougars and hope California defeats Stanford.

The Cougars, 1-6 in league, have reconciled themselves to the role of spoiler. They will enter the 92nd Apple Cup with all due fervor. But even coach Mike Price, who likes to plug his team into whatever emotional outlet is available, said the win will go to the team that makes the fewer mistakes.

Washington State's befuddled offense will try yet again to stay onsides, protect Steve Birnbaum and open the right holes at the right time for Deon Burnett.

The defense's task is less routine.

If U-Dub were employing a purer option attack, as Oregon State did earlier this decade, the Cougars would know exactly what to do. Defensive coordinator Bill Doba is a nationally recognized expert in defensing the option.

But only one-eighth of the Husky offense has involved the option. The rest of the time, Tuiasosopo is dropping back to pass or handing off to Willie Hurst or Maurice Shaw.

"If you're playing an Oregon State (of a few years ago), you put your middle linebacker right over the center and let him run downhill both ways,'' Doba said. "You do that against these guys and they go zone-strong, you're out of position. So it causes a lot of problems. Hopefully they're not as proficient at it because they're doing all those things.''

When healthy, Tuiasosopo is far deadlier than Oregon State's quarterbacks at mid-decade.

"The guy running it is the key -- he's really good,'' Doba said. "He's difficult to tackle, he stays on his feet and he just makes plays. Sometimes it's jammed up and he just turns around and runs the other way. So he scares me as much as their offense.''

Impersonating his tactics has been a focal point of WSU practices. That task fell on scout-team quarterbacks Matt Kegel, Kjell Nesen and Billy Graffis. They began studying film of the UW quarterback Sunday, earlier than usual. In full-contact drills against the first-team defense, they tried against all odds to duplicate Tuiasosopo's movements.

If all went well, they have at least one thing in common with the UW quarterback today.

A bruised backside.

(These are notes that I sent out during the game for the benefit of CougFans who didn't have TV or radio coverage.)

The Apple Cup — how it played out.

1st Quarter

- Birnbaum throws interception - Cougs hold - DAWG Field Goal - Dawgs 3, Cougs 0 - Dawgs easy drive to TD - Dawgs 10 - Cougs 0

2nd Quarter

- Coug Field Goal - Dawgs 10, Cougs 3 - Dawgs punt - Cougs punt - Cougs get ball on Dawg 27 yd line from bad punt - Lateral intercepted for Dawg TD - called back from Dawg offsides - Dawg punt - Coug Field Goal - Dawgs 10, Cougs 6 - Dawgs trick play - lateral/pass for TD - Dawgs 17, Cougs 6 - Gesser comes in at QB - Cougs punt - Dawgs punt - Half ends 17-6

* Burnett 8 carries for 7 yards * Dawgs are dominating this game both offense and defense. Dawg penalties have saved the Cougs so far or it would be at least 24-6.

3rd Quarter

- Kick off to Cougs - Birnbaum at QB - Cougs punt - Dawgs punt -Cougs punt - Dawgs driving - great sack by the Cougs takes Dawgs out of field goal range - Dawgs 17, Cougs 6

4th Quarter Apple Cup - Cougs punt - Dawgs punt to Coug 39 yard line - Cougs punt - Dawgs draw play and 80 yard run for TD - longest this season for Dawgs - Dawgs 24, Cougs 6 - Gesser at QB runs from Coug 20 to Dawg 20 - injured - Birnbaum at QB - hand off to Hawkins for 20 yd TD run - Cougs go for 2 pts - make it easily - Dawgs 24, Cougs 14 - Dawgs punt - Cougs with time running out, 4th and inches ALMOST complete pass - incomplete - Dawgs take over for remaining time -

Final - Dawgs 24, Cougs 14

Notes: Cougs lost this game. Dawgs dominated on offense and defense. Raging rainy downpour for most of the game. Stanford beats CAL 31-13 for Rose Bowl berth.

From the Lewiston Tribune Online Sunday, November 21, 1999

Simply disheartening for Cougs

DALE GRUMMERT

SEATTLE -- The innumerable speeches, the uncountable email messages, the solitary, surprising prediction by the freshman running back -- none of it made a difference. The Washington State Cougars perhaps faltered in a higher emotional key, but falter they did.

This was the Apple Cup? The Cougars' 24-14 loss Saturday to Washington offered shaky line play, key athletes languishing on the sideline, bungled short-yardage plays -- the usual Cougar earmarks, but rain-drenched and wind-whipped. Festive it wasn't. It was Christmas at Alcatraz.

Deon Burnett had tried to infuse the proper spirit by ill-advisedly telling the Washington student newspaper, the UW Daily, "I would wager anything that we'll beat them. Looking at the film, I think we can run all over them."

Oh, if he could unring that bell. Evidently taking the remark as a challenge, a heretofore average UW defense held the rookie running back to a season-low 20 rushing yards as the Huskies outgained the Cougars 430-281.

"That target on his back was probably pretty heavy," said WSU coach Mike Price, disconcerted by Burnett's uncharacteristic comment.

As usual, the Washington State defense played well enough to keep things interesting, if a 17-6 deficit through the first dreary 20 minutes of the second half can be called interesting. As usual, the offense failed to capitalize, punting on five straight possessions stretching from the second quarter to the fourth.

"The interception (by Jermaine Smith) really hurt us at the beginning of the game," admitted Steve Birnbaum, who had thrown the pass. "Whether it was me throwing to an open guy and him dropping it, or me missing by a yard, or one guy slipping off his block, it was the same old -- crap."

With rain falling steadily upon a capacity crowd of 72,973 at Husky Stadium, the Huskies kept their option tactics to a minimum but still rushed for 250 yards. The Cougs tried and failed to follow suit, managing only 91 ground yards, 59 of those on a Jason Gesser scramble.

The Huskies "did a nice job slanting their line, gapping their tackles," Price said. "Our running game was miserable."

The Huskies thrived on big plays, including a double pass borrowed from the Cougar playbook: Marques Tuiasosopo throwing laterally to Dane Looker, who passed downfield to an open Joe Jarzynka for a 55-yard touchdown to make it 17-6 in the second quarter.

The back-breaker was Paul Arnold's 80-yard jaunt on a draw play in the third period.

"Whether we were 9-0 or 10-0 going into this game," said WSU running back Adam Hawkins, whose team is actually now 2-9, "anytime you lose the Apple Cup it hurts. This is for Washington pride, this is for the whole state. The fact of this (being) accumulated onto our season -- it hurts bad."

The Huskies, 7-4, were vying for a Rose Bowl berth but California failed to cooperate, losing to Stanford. The Huskies instead received and accepted an invitation from the Holiday Bowl.

"Obviously (the players) would have liked to have somebody walk in and hold up a big bouquet or roses," Washington coach Rick Neuheisel said, "but our focus today was beating Washington State and winning the Apple Cup. All is well in Husky land tonight."

Perhaps even more than in other Apple Cups, Price stressed the traditional rivalry to his young players, with speeches and email messages from former players.

But nobody could email a cure for Steve Gleason's and Leaford Hackett's ankle sprains, and the Cougs could have used those two seniors. Gleason took the field for two plays, Hackett for none.

So effective in the red zone through nine games, the Cougars blew TD opportunities for the second straight game (twice in the first half), and a daring fourth-and-inches pass play backfired with Russell Mizin's downfield drop on WSU's second-to-last possession.

Backup quarterback Gesser provided a spark for WSU in the fourth quarter with his 59-yard scramble, setting up Hawkins' 17-yard TD run to create the final score with 8:22 left. Gesser got the wind knocked out of him on his big play and didn't return.

Perhaps thinking of Gesser's scramble, or Looker's touchdown pass, or Arnold's runaway draw, Hawkins noted that "people play spectacular in these (Apple Cup) games. People do extraordinary things."

So why did it all look so ordinary?

Washington State 0 6 0 8 --14

Washington 10 7 0 7 --24

First Quarter

Wash--FG J.Anderson 20, 5:38.

Wash--M. Shaw 4 run (J.Anderson kick), :31.

Second Quarter

WSU--FG Lindell 22, 13:45.

WSU--FG Lindell 28, 6:05.

Fourth Quarter

Wash--Arnold 80 run (J.Anderson kick), 10:16.

WSU--Hawkins 19 run (Mencke pass from Birnbaum), 8:22.

A--72,973.

Game Stats

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING--WSU, Gesser 4-76, Burnett 13-20, Hawkins 9-19, Birnbaum 3-(minus 24). Washington, Arnold 14-126, M.Shaw 20-68, Tuiasosopo 12-47, Conniff 4-12, team 2-(minus 3).

PASSING--WSU, Birnbaum 14-28-1-190, Gesser 0-1-0-0. Washington, Tuiasosopo 13-22-0-125, Looker 1-1-55.

RECEIVING--WSU, Henderson 4-36, Taylor 3-42, Burnett 2-47, Williams 2-46, Mencke 2-15, Hawkins 1-4. Washington, Stevens 6-53, Conniff 2-30, Elstrom 2-18, Jarzynka 1-55, M.Shaw 1-11, Juergens 1-11, Arnold 1-2.

Sunday, November 21, 1999

UW 24, WSU 14
Quick fact

The Cougars again lost the possession-time battle, 35 1/2 minutes to 24 1/2.
Key plays
On one of its few option plays, Washington scores on a pitch to Maurice Shaw, sweeping in from the 4-yard line to give the Huskies a 10-0 lead late in the first quarter.
The Cougars gain 48 yards on a routine dumpoff to Deon Burnett, but can't score a TD from first-and-goal from the 9. They settle for the first of their two second-quarter field goals.
On a double pass similar to the one Washington State had used the previous week, Marques Tuiasosopo throws to Dane Looker, who watches cornerback LeJuan Gibbons bite and Joe Jarzynka spring open. Looker's heave finds its target for a 55-yard TD and a 17-6 lead in the second period.
Washington backup tailback Paul Arnold bursts through the line on a draw and pops to the left sideline for an 80-yard scoring run as the Huskies take a 24-6 lead.
Next up for Cougars
WSU heads to Hawaii today to face the Rainbows on Saturday in a rare 12th game.

Monday, November 22, 1999

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK/DALE GRUMMERT ... The hidden value of faint praise

Grummert is a Tribune sportswriter People flocked like cattle to Seattle / After Kurt Cobain / And before him the rain Robyn Hitchcock, "Viva! Sea-Tac," 1999 (this and subsequent quotations)

Depending on the angle of your view, Husky Stadium looks like two serpents hissing at each other, or two giant, partially opened passports, or two disembodied mouths exchanging cartoonish insults. Ticket-buyers have two choices: Sit in the rain or climb to the second tier and huddle inside one of these sinister yapping mouths, wondering at every moment if the thing is going to clamp shut and turn all those purple-cloaked Husky fans into grape jelly.

By virtue of these odd additions, the stadium looks modern in the worst sense, until you explore the catacombs and realize the basic structure has been in place forever -- since 1920 to be exact.

The last thing anyone needs, especially if he or she has been watching a bad football game in the Seattle rain, is some sportswriter complaining about the press-box elevator. Very briefly, then, I'll mention that it was built by the ancient Greeks. On Apple Cup Saturday, you wait in line 20 minutes to ride the thing, and even then you can't climb aboard without an E ticket from Disneyland. I don't want to say the elevator is slow, but we'd probably get there sooner if we climbed one by one on Rapunzel's hair.

By the time you reach the stadium, though, you're accustomed to waiting. If traffic gets any worse in metropolitan Seattle, the speed traps will go out of business; the cops will just stroll along the rows of cars and hand out loitering tickets.

All the groovers came down from Vancouver

And some of them came up from Ore-GONE

... Viva! Seattle Tacoma, viva viva Sea-Tac

They've got the best computers and coffee and smack They came not only from B.C. and Oregon, but also from Idaho and Montana and Spokane -- these groovers in the great Cobain rush of the early 1990s. Listen to the conversations: Seattle is overflowing with young, displaced post-grunge Inland Northwesterners.

And every odd-numbered year on the Friday before the Apple Cup, the groovers from Pullman retrace this Teen Spirit migration. Skipping their 2 p.m. Poli Sci classes and loading into their parents' hand-me-down Civics, they hit Highway 26 flying, their heads full of computers and coffee and football.

And every time, aside from the grand aberration of 1997, they are disillusioned the next day. Washington State's latest loss in Seattle, by a 24-14 score Saturday, differed from the others only by the fact that Washington, too, looked compromised by the whole thing, by the Apple Cup hyperbole. The Cougars are the worst team in the worst Pac-10 season in memory, and the Huskies don't look a whole lot better.

The Dawgs, like Seattle itself, have suffered this decade from overpraise -- from too much success, too much excitement, too many compound viva's. Starting with the booster who bankrolled Billy Joe Hobert in 1992, they have been loved to death. Their new coach, Rick Neuheisel, you imagine, comes not to praise the Huskies but to unbury them. That's what they need. That's what Seattle needs.

In the city's case, it's partly our fault: On behalf of the media, I confess everything except assaulting a WSU security guard. We kill the things we love. Seattle, the last frontier, the last paradise in the great western migration -- after years of topping those Most Livable Cities in America lists -- finds itself almost unlivable.

Long live everything in Washington state, including everybody. May they live to a million years. May they reproduce until there's no room to go anywhere, clustered under the Space Needle like walking eggs with arms and legs.

Viva viva viva viva viva viva.

Sunday, the Cougars were headed to Hawaii to play in the Bad Conscience Bowl, a tropical addendum to their season that must leave them feeling a little peculiar. The Huskies were reconciling themselves to the Holiday Bowl. Traffic was thinner on Highway 26 -- even eastbound, because most of the students stayed on the west side for Thanksgiving vacation.

At the Hatton Coulee Rest Stop -- "Free Coffee,'' the road sign says -- an occasional carfull of Cougar fans pulled up and climbed out, heavy-lidded and sluggish. They walked to the little cubicle beyond the rest rooms, where an old man and his wife huddled against the cold, smiling as they handing out free coffee (not Starbucks) and cookies shaped liked Christmas trees.

Free. It seemed like the last free anything, anywhere.

From Cougfan.com

Apple Cup aftermath

Date: 11/22/1999

Price, players reflect on what perhaps was the most painful loss of the season for the Washington State Cougars.

By RYAN METCALFE/Cougfan.com Palouse Bureau Chief

SEATTLE -- Like Tantalus under the fruit tree, the Cougars had their apple within their grasp, but they were never able to get their fingers on it.

The football gods have tested the Cougars all season, keeping them close enough in almost every game to feel as though they could have won, should have won but in the end lost.

This time the stakes were higher and the pain was greater as Washington State lost the Apple Cup to Washington 24-14 Saturday.

"It hurts because to the seniors it meant so much and we are such a close nit group. To not come up with a win hurts," WSU running back Adam Hawkins said. "This is Washington pride right here. This is what you are thinking about when you are lifting and running, the Huskies. And to have this thing in our grasp with so many chances, the loss really hurts."

Hawkins certainly did his part to keep the Cougars in the game with a 19-yard touchdown run, bouncing off tacklers and scoring on a second effort to cut the Huskies' lead to 24-14. The defense would stop the Huskies as it had much of the game and get one last chance, but Steve Birnbaum was stopped short on third-and-one and his pass to Russell Mizen on fourth-and-one fell incomplete. WSU coach Mike Price said tight end Corey Scott was more open on the play, but Birnbaum probably rushed his decision to throw to Mizen.

It was like our whole year," Price said. "When it came down to the nitty gritty, we didn't make plays."

Price and the Cougars knew it was more than that one pass which went off the finger tips of Mizen as UW broke open a tight defensive struggle with a pair of long plays.

UW extended a 10-6 second quarter lead with a trick play. Dane Looker threw on a double-pass play down field to Joe Jarzynka who was wide open in the Cougar secondary and able to trot in for a 55-yard touchdown. "I'm supposed to sell it a little bit, but the corner (LeJuan Gibbons) bit so hard on the screen play," Jarzynka said. "I wanted them to throw the ball to me before he turned around and caught me."

Price said the Cougars had seen the play on film and warned players during the game when they saw Looker warming up on the sidelines.

The Huskies' second big play all but ended the Cougars' hopes when freshman Paul Arnold broke an 80-yard run early in the fourth quarter on a draw play. WSU safety Torry Hollimon said fellow safety Billy Newman took a blindside block and he just took a poor angle which allowed the run to go the distance.

Jason Gesser came off the bench to make things interesting, breaking a 59-yard run three plays later to set up the Hawkins touchdown, but the Cougars could get no closer.

Prior to Hawkins' touchdown the Cougars made several big plays, but were unable to reach the end zone. In the first half the Cougars twice got inside the UW 10, but were forced to settle for short field goals.

"The crowd was electric today and everyone knew what was at stake - it was Apple Cup," WSU freshman receiver Collin Henderson said. "... Those two missed opportunities were frustrating for us because we would've had a lot better shot if we get 14 points instead of six, but our seniors fought well and we didn't give up in the fourth quarter."

Certainly the offense felt like it let the team down, unable to get the running game going and dropping several passes.

"I give our defense a ton of credit," Hawkins said. "They kept us in the game and they were awesome. I put the blame on us. We didn't make the right reads. ... offensively we didn't get things done."

UW coach Rick Neuheisel said the Huskies focused their defensive effort on stopping the WSU running attack and were able to force Birnbaum into audibling into runs by moving extra defenders in and out of the box.

WSU running back Deon Burnett gave some Huskies extra motivation by telling the UW student paper that he was ready to run all over the Huskies.

"We were pissed, especially coming from a freshman," Toalei Mulitauaopele said. "We wanted to stop him and shut him down."

Burnett said after the game that some of his words may have been taken out of context. Price said he better learn to back up what he says.

"The target on his back was probably a little heavy, but that won't happen again," Price added.

The defense wanted to take as much of the blame for allowing those two big plays and for not coming up with the big turnover.

"It is frustrating - we should have won," safety Billy Newman said. "The defense should have made some plays and we didn't. We can't blame the offense. We've got to take the blame ourselves. We all had opportunities. I had an opportunity to make an interception. Defense has got to step up and make the plays we know we can."

The Cougars will get one last chance to make those plays this season with a nonconference game at Hawaii on Saturday. The Cougars flew directly to Hawaii from Seattle on Sunday, but Price and the players said they are not treating this game like a bowl game.

Lewiston Tribune Online Tuesday, November 23, 1999

Eight Coug football players earn Pac-10 academic award

PULLMAN -- Eight members of the 1999 Washington State football team were named to the Pacific-10 academic team, conference commissioner Tom Hanson announced Monday.

WSU's list of honorees include four first-team selections -- linebackers Steve Gleason, Grady Emmerson and Serign Marong and place-kicker Rian Lindell. It was the second time that Gleason and Emmerson had been picked.

Honorable mention honors went to four other Cougs -- quarterbacks Steve Birnbaum, Jason Gesser and Paul Mencke plus running back Adam Hawkins.

Marong, a sophomore from Pullman, boasted the best grade point average of the eight with a 3.61 GPA in biology, which was the highest of the 11 defensive players picked to the academic team.

Gleason, WSU's senior co-captain from Spokane and leading tackler with 98, posted a 3.20 GPA in management information systems. He had led all Pac-10 players in tackles through the first nine games before being injured in the USC game. He saw only brief action against Washington on Saturday. He finished ninth all-time at WSU in tackles with 282.

Emmerson, a walk-on player five years ago from Kennewick, has a 3.29 GPA in math education and has been a mainstay among the Cougs' linebacker corps the last two years. He made 12 tackles in a losing effort against UW.

Lindell became WSU's third most prolific kick scorer from Vancouver, Wash., hitting nine of 13 field goals, including a 52-yarder. He made 46 straight and has a career 109-112 in PATs.

WSU, Oregon, USC and Stanford each placed four players on the first team.

by ME
(I don't know now why I wrote this, but I did and I think it is somewhat humorous.)

Huskers two bizy two studdy!!

Bye Stev Joove -Graduwit Americus - Alfalfa Cappa Lamb-Duh! - WSU 1900 en somthing - genrilly a gud riter. (reed whut I rote up-top there ...)

Lissin! Tha Cougs mae hev lawst tha Appil Cupp, butt thay awr stil #1ne inn ma mynd. An thes heer awrtical prooves et. Whyle tha Huskers wer pracktising footbal, tha deng Coogs wer studyeng en lookeng ovir thare buks. the scowre es uv know consiquince.

Tha Coogs awr actuelly GRADYEWATING sum uv tha gyes!! Thet meens thet tha Huskers awr reel loe awn the "Totim Powl" es wee saiy heer inn Ideho. Thay awr awl "Flunckies."

Lett mee spel et ouwt four yew geys whoe liv inn othir couwnty's en awl thet. Yew kin bee reel prowd uv tha Coogs. Thay didd ther best, en I wud thenk thet thay wil whipp tha Perl Harber doods sum-whir inn tha 100 too 3 rainje. I coud be rong. I hav bin rong inn tha passt. I howp I em knot jest bloweng smowke heer. I saiy, Cougs 100 en tha Haw-Whyins, saiy abowt 3-4-5-6 poiwnts er soe. Giv er taik ...

PE:Ess: MS Spel chick siems too bee bustid awn mah cumpewtir.

Lewiston Tribune Online Friday, November 26, 1999

Washington State clicks on its Hawaiian link

Dale Grummert

If the beaches of Hawaii seem exotic to someone from Pullman, Washington State coaches hope the opposite is also true: that the rolling hills of the Palouse will prove intriguing to Polynesian high-school recruits.

While in Hawaii this week for a game at 8 p.m. PST Saturday against the Hawaii Rainbows, Cougar coaches were planning to visit 25 high schools in their continuing effort to establish a Cougar presence on the islands.

The WSU roster already includes four Hawaiians, including two prominent freshmen: backup quarterback Jason Gesser and defensive tackle Ing Aleaga.

"It's so different -- that's what they like,'' Cougars coach Mike Price said. "I asked Gesser and Ing why they came here (to WSU), and they said, 'Because it's so different.'

"People are starting to notice (Hawaiian recruits) a little more,'' Price said. "The high-school coaching and high-school programs are getting consistently better.''

Gesser, who threw 29 touchdown passes as a senior at St. Louis High in Honolulu in 1997, was greeted by a group of reporters when the Cougars landed at the Honolulu airport Sunday.

"He's going to have to be able to handle that, and not let it be a distraction,'' Price said. "Have it help motivate him.''

Gesser relieved Steve Birnbaum on two occasions last week against Washington, scrambling for 59 yards to set up a fourth-quarter touchdown.

Although still somewhat bothered by the thumb injury that sidelined him for seven games, Gesser is expected to see more playing time than Birnbaum against Hawaii.

Birnbaum and other seniors will probably start, but Price will substitute early, viewing this game as a learning opportunity for next year's club.

RAINBOWS' POT OF GOLD -- Hawaii is wrapping up a remarkable season under first-year coach June Jones, the former San Diego Chargers boss.

Last year the Rainbows went 0-12, stretching their losing streak to 19 games, the longest in the nation at the time. They had lost 24 straight road games in the Western Athletic Conference.

Now they are 8-3 overall, co-champions with Fresno State in the WAC at 5-2, and headed for the Oahu Bowl against fellow upstart Oregon State. They set an NCAA record for the most improved record after a winless season.

"It's really hard to believe,'' Jones said. "It's something the kids will never forget.''

The Rainbows' free-wheeling passing attack is similar to Washington State's, but far more effective at the moment. In a 48-41 win over Navy last week, Dan Robinson passed for 530 yards and five touchdowns. Against Eastern Illinois earlier, Dwight Carter caught nine passes for 220 yards.

And to think the season began with a 62-7 loss to USC. The Rainbows' only other losses were 34-14 to Texas Christian and 38-19 to Rice.

GROUNDLESS -- The Cougars will put an emphasis on reviving a rushing game that had been fairly dependable until last week, when Deon Burnett managed only 20 ground yards in a 24-14 loss to Washington.

The Huskies "were able to blitz at key times, almost like they knew what we were running,'' said running back Adam Hawkins, who did score his first career touchdown. "They have some big boys in the middle that we weren't able to move sometimes. I put a lot of the blame on the running backs not making the right reads. Deon and myself got a little too anxious and didn't let the hole develop.''

But Hawkins served as Burnett's advocate when the subject changed to pregame comments. Burnett had predicted a victory and big rushing numbers.

"I'll always take Deon's defense,'' the junior backup said. "To say that was a mistake. He knows that. He's one of the best freshman running backs in the nation. To be effective at this level, you have to be confident. I feed off that. (His confidence) just took him too far this time.'' ---- Saturday, November 27, 1999

Lewiston Tribune Online Sunday, November 27, 1999

WSU plans on using fresh approach; Gesser to start in place of injured Birnbaum; Cougars will play plenty of freshmen in season finale at Hawaii

Dale Grummert

With every new development, tonight's football game at Honolulu becomes more delectable from an Hawaiian standpoint and more worrisome to Washington State.

Now there's this: Cougars quarterback Steve Birnbaum twisted his neck while throwing a pass in practice Wednesday, and may not even suit up when WSU plays Hawaii at 8 p.m. PST at Aloha Stadium.

So freshman Jason Gesser, returning to his hometown and playing in the stadium where his high-school games were staged, will make his starting debut as a college quarterback.

It seems possible that the Cougars have no truly healthy QBs at the moment. Price said Friday the thumb on Gesser's throwing hand is fine, but it had bothered the rookie during midweek practices. He missed seven games after tearing a ligament in the thumb Sept. 18, and attempted no passes in his fill-in performance last week at Washington.

Paul Mencke will continue his work as a backup wide receiver, but will also be No. 2 quarterback, despite a swollen elbow on his throwing arm.

Even before Birnbaum's injury, Price had planned to violate a personal rule and openly dedicate the game to his underclassmen. There are several justifications for such a move:

- It is the "12th game,'' which is rather like the "fifth quarter'' or the "19th hole'' -- at least for the Cougars, who have never before played 12 regular-season games in one season.

- It's hardly a radical shift. More than 20 WSU freshmen have played this year, and at least four of them are starting.

- With a 2-9 record, what do the Cougars have to lose?

Although several seniors will start, Price will use young players earlier and longer than usual, expressly to begin preparation for the 2000 season.

"It's not my style,'' he said, "but my style hasn't worked yet either. This year anyway.''

He would have found even greater justification for this experiment if the Hawaii Rainbows had lived up to their patsy reputation. Instead they are 8-3 and bowl-bound.

"It's just our luck -- that's the way this year has gone,'' Price said.

If he goes overboard on his youth movement, or even if he doesn't, the Cougars are in danger of their first 10-loss season since 1970. The Rainbows are 4«-point favorites.

The Cougars will not likely find this game as physically punishing as their Pac-10 contests. Hawaii can scarcely pose the sort of power-running threat that has been the WSU defense's only nemesis.

The Rainbows do rank second in the nation in passing yards, but the Cougs should have an effective nickel package with the return of strong safety Earl Riley and the availability of banged-up Torry Hollimon and Lamont Thompson. The safeties' responsibilities will be altered by the fact that Hawaii uses no tight ends. A modicum of pass-rush will help, since Hawaii quarterback Dan Robinson isn't a scrambler.

The Cougars' chief concern, as usual, will be their languid offense, particularly their ability to handle blitzes. Hawaii's defensive coordinator, Greg McMackin, employs the same zone blitz he used the previous four years with the Seattle Seahawks.

Gesser's scrambling ability may ease the burden on the Cougar offensive line, which plans to rotate about eight players, including several freshmen.

Washington State's preparation has met some unusual obstacles. In deciding to spend the entire week in Hawaii, the Cougars relinquished use of their scout team. That means the regulars are doubling as scout-team players, which has slowed practices.

Privacy has also been a problem for the Cougs, who practiced Tuesday through Thursday at the University of Hawaii. Price said their initial practice field was overlooked by the Rainbows' coaches office.

"We moved to another practice field -- it's where they video from,'' Price said. "A guy was in the window. I'm not suggesting he was videoing, but he certainly was watching practice. It's hard to put in anything new.''

In addition, the team faced the inconvenience of suiting up at a YMCA and busing to the practice field.

In short, this trip isn't exactly what Price had envisioned when he scheduled the game several months ago. The Rainbows "were a lot more cooperative when they were 0-11,'' he said.

Lewiston Tribune Online Sunday, November 28, 1999

Cougars find their pot of gold HONOLULU, Hawaii -- Two time zones from home, and better late than never, Washington State's beleaguered football team found a touch of vindication Saturday night.

Rian Lindell kicked a go-ahead 25-yard field goal with 2:53 remaining and Adam Hawkins added an insurance touchdown inside the final minute as the Cougars defeated bowl-bound Hawaii 22-14.

Exploiting another staunch defensive performance and a sporadic but timely second-half running game, the Cougars outlasted the Rainbows on a windy evening before a capacity crowd at confetti-strewn Aloha Stadium.

Up-the-gut rambles by Hawkins, the junior running back upstaged this season by freshman Deon Burnett, fueled the Cougar drive that culminated in Lindell's winning field goal.

"This almost makes up for the last month or so,'' Lindell said.

The WSU defense then induced four straight incomplete passes, giving the Cougars possession and leading to Hawkins' 6-yard touchdown. Hawkins had also dashed to a 30-yard TD to give the Cougars a brief 12-7 lead in the third quarter.

"It doesn't get any better than this,'' Hawkins said. "I'll remember this feeling in the offseason when I'm running and lifting weights.

"In the fourth quarter we've given up so many close games,'' Hawkins said. "This time I wanted to make sure we went out right. I wanted to kind of be the spark plug. You start making runs and the line gets pumped up and starts making great blocks.''

Washington State finishes the season at 3-9. Hawaii, the most surprising college team in the nation this year, will take an 8-4 record into the Oahu Bowl in Honolulu against Oregon State.

Cougars freshman Jason Gesser, making his starting debut in his hometown, played steadily at quarterback. He was probably limited by a sore thumb and a second-half knee injury, but he lent an occasional spark to WSU's struggling offense with his scrambling ability.

Gesser assumed the No. 1 job when Steve Birnbaum twisted his neck in practice Wednesday.

"Everybody said I was starting and I didn't believe it until I came out for the first snap,'' Gesser said. "I was jittered up at the beginning, you could probably tell, but I took some hits and got into the flow.

"The defense played spectacular,'' Gesser said. "Adam Hawkins played spectacular. He and Rian Lindell were the MVPs of the game, along with the whole defense.''

Gesser said his knee injury occurred in a pile after a play.

"They (the Rainbows) were doing dirty stuff in the (pile) ... somebody twisted my knee. That's the way football is played.''

Yet the Honolulu crowd seemed sympathetic to its favorite son. "Even though I'm on another team, they still give me support,'' he said. "That's all I can ask for.''

After Hawkins' third-quarter TD, Anthony Smith scooped up a fumble by WSU wide receiver Nian Taylor and sprinted 40 yards to put Hawaii ahead 14-12.

But the Rainbows went scoreless the rest of the way.

The defenses set the tone almost the whole way, producing seven turnovers. Facing a team that had produced more than 500 passing yards the previous week, the Cougars used five defensive backs for much of the game.

"I thought the defense played awesome,'' WSU coach Mike Price said. "I can't say enough about the package (defensive coordinator Bill) Doba has and how he makes adjustments. He's a great football coach and I'm sure glad he's a Cougar.

"We twisted with our (defensive) tackles and blitzed a little,'' Price said. "Some of our blitzes were outside linebackers who really were defensive backs because we played with a nickel package so much.''

Twice in the first half Washington State almost immediately answered turnover with turnover.

Two plays after an interception by the Cougars' Lamont Thompson, Burnett fumbled on the Hawaii 38-yard line.

Later in the half, when WSU's Rob Meier dove to recover a fumble punt reception on the Rainbow 27, the Cougs squandered the opportunity with Quincy LeJay's one-handed interception of a bobbled pass.

So the only score of the first half was Rian Lindell's 42-yard field goal on WSU's first possession.

The Cougars' defense throughout the half, though, was superb.

Price said the win will give the Cougars a springboard for next season.

"This was real big for guys like (Marcus) Trufant, Hawkins -- the guys coming back,'' he said. "They're excited now about coming back.'' ----- From Cougfan.com 11/28/1999

More than just a win?

CougFan.com Sunday, November 28, 1999

Mike Price's Kiddie Corps far from perfect but makes big plays when needed, defeating Hawaii and setting stage of 2000 comeback.

By Jack Evans

Cougfan.com Managing Editor

In what had been dubbed by some as the Last Chance Bowl for Mike Price's struggling Washington State football, his Cougars came up big in Honolulu.

"The future's looking bright," Price gushed moments after his troops downed Hawaii's Rainbow Warriors -- the Oahu Bowl-bound champions of the Western Athletic Conference -- in an error-plagued but dramatic 22-14 come-from-behind win.

Price's early peek into the future is prompted by two facts. First, after struggling to but two wins the previous 11 outings, this one will linger long because it sends everyone into the new millennium on a high note. And second, the cornerstones of this victory -- save heroic footed senior kicker Rian Lindell and his three clutch field goals -- are youngsters.

Foremost of course is redshirt freshman quarterback Jason Gesser, a Honolulu native who made his first start as a Cougar and took every snap despite spraining his knee in a second half pile up.

For a guy who had thrown but one real-game pass (last week against Washington) since tearing up his thumb back in September, the kid looked good. He completed 19 of 33 passes for 141 yards and an interception that wasn't his fault. And get this -- 15 of this completions were to players who will be back in 2000.

Oh sure, Gesser still had bouts of happy feet when the pocket collapsed, and his long throws -- courtesy of the thumb? -- didn't have the zip that they did last fall. But he was poised.

In fact, when Hawaii took a 14-12 lead at the very end of the third quarter courtesy of a Nian Taylor fumble that was returned for a TD, you just knew this wasn't going to be the Cougars' patented El Foldo when confronted with adversity.

Indeed, Gesser calmly executed a 76-yard drive that put the Cougs ahead for good when Lindell booted his third goal of the game from 24 yards out with just less than three minutes to go.

Among the players instrumental in the drive were junior running back Alex Hawkins -- the Cougars' offensive star of the day with two TDs and 103 yards -- and the left of side of the offensive line that features two more juniors, the Raymond twins of Moses Lake, and occasionally true freshman tight end Josh Shavies.

Hawkins, mind you, is the back up to Deon Burnett, who himself piled up 97 rushing yards and finished the season just short of 1,000 yards. Burnett is a true freshman.

PRAISE FOR THE D

Price, whose mood seemed buoyant enough to rival his delight after winning the Pac-10 crown in 1997, was clearly pleased with his offense's - especially Gesser's -- play.

But he saved his biggest compliments for his defense and coordinator Bill Doba.

"The defense was just awesome," he said. "They did an incredible job."

Hawaii, which was 0-12 a year ago, won eight games this season largely via the explosive offense installed by first-year head coach June Jones. On this same field a week ago, the 'Bows racked up more than 500 yards through the air.

But on this night, quarterback Dan Robinson was bewitched and bothered much of the time -- save a nifty 75 yard TD pass to Dwight Carter when the Cougs gambled on a blitz -- and the 'Bow running game was shut down to the tune of a mere 83 yards.

The guys making the big plays for the Cougars were the likes of true freshman Marcus Trufant - a big time player with destiny written all over him. And junior defensive end Austin Matson. And junior linebacker Curtis Holden, a fiery sort who admirably filled the leadership void left by injured senior Steve Gleason. The list goes on.

The bottom on line on it all is that youth was served Saturday night in Honolulu. If this is a glimpse of the crimson future, then there will be far more wins ahead than we've seen over these last two painful seasons.

Gesser - like Trufant on defense -- offers hope, optimism and, more than anything, that intangible knack for winning: something he's now accomplished in 25 straight starts going back to his junior year down the road at Honolulu's St. Louis High. ----- From Cougfan.com

WSU vs. Hawaii stats

Cougar D pitches first-half shutout while running back Alex Hawkins rushes to paydirt twice in second half.

SCORING SUMMARY

Wazzu 3 0 9 10 --- 22 Hawaii 0 0 14 0 --- 14

WSU: Lindell 41 yard field goal WSU: Lindell 36 yard field goal Hawaii: Carter 75 pass from Robinson (Hannum kick) WSU: Hawkins 30 run (two-point conversion failed) Hawaii: Smith 38 fumble return (Hannum kick) WSU: Lindell 24 yard field goal WSU: Hawkins six run (Lindell kick)

TEAM STATS

Washington St. Hawaii

First downs 20 15 Rushed-yrds 49-222 19-83 Passing yrds 141 254 Sacked-yrds lost 4-20 1-7 Return yrds 73 67 Passes 19-34-1 19-51-3 Punts 9-41.6 9-39.0 Fumbles-lost 4-2 3-1 Penalties-yards 7-50 4-45 Time of possession 34:53 25:07

INDIVIDUAL STATS

RUSHING Wash. St:Hawkins 13-103, Burnett 26-97, Gesser 10-22. Hawaii:Weaver 14-80, Thompson 3-7, Robinson 2-minus 4.

PASSING Wash.St:Gesser 19-33-1-141, Mencke 0-1-0-0. Hawaii:Robinson 19-51-3-254.

RECEIVING Wash. St-Zubedi 5-50, Mencke 4-35, Taylor 4-27, Burnett 3-10, Henderson 2-15, Scott 1-4. Hawaii-Stutzmann 5-53, Carter 4-104, Lelie 4-64, C Harris 3-35, Weaver 3-minus 2.

Attendance: 45,382 ----- From Cougfan.com Date: 11/23/1999

Outlook 2000

As the saying goes, better luck next year. But the Cougs have more than lady luck with them in 2000.

By the staff of Cougfan.com

THE OFFENSE

Starters lost: WR Leaford Hackett, WR Nian Taylor, QB Steve Birnbaum, OL Ryan Tujague, OL Joe Criscione, OL Mike Schwarz, C Lincoln Walden-Schulz, TE Corey Scott

Top returnees: RB Deon Burnett, WR Marcus Williams, WR Milton Wynn, WR Farwan Zubedi, WR/RS Collin Henderson, TE Russell Mizin, QB Jason Gesser, OL Reed Raymond, OL Ryan Raymond

Look for: Speedy WR Curtis Nettles and athletic sophomore TE Josh Shavies to play significant roles in 2000. Nettles, out most of 1999 with a back injury, could add a dynamic new dimension to the offense - as well as the kick return team.

Key to the season: There are two. First, the last two seasons have proven in spades how critical it is to have solid play at quarterback, so sophomore-to-be Jason Gesser - who saw only limited time in 1999 due to a thumb injury - needs to emerge if another losing season is to be avoided. He'll be pushed by athletic redshirt freshman Matt Kegel; the youngster from Montana is big, agile, confident and coming along nicely, but far from knowing the Cougar offense the way Gesser does. Whoever is behind center, though, will have solid talent around him in the form of star running back Deon Burnett and a bevy of slick receivers.

The second key to offensive success will be the development and physical growth of a very young offensive line that will be led by two seniors - the injury prone Raymond twins - but chock full of redshirt sophomores: Phil Locker, Tyler Hunt, Derrick Roche and Jason Hughes. All four are gamers who gained considerable experience in 1999, but need to work on technique and the weights. Also back is senior-to-be Erik Larson, the team's long-snapping specialist. Also possibly joining the mix could be junior Joey Hollenbeck and sophomore Brian Hollenberg, a pair of hosses who shuttled between the O and D lines in 1999.

THE DEFENSE

Starters lost: LB Steve Gleason, LB Grady Emmerson, DT Rob Meier, DE Jesse Ratcliffe, DE Mark Hedeen (career-ending injury), SS Earl Riley, CB LeJuan Gibbons, SS Torry Hollimon

Top returnees: LB Curtis Holden, LB Raonall Smith, DT Tomasi Kongaika, DT Ing Aleaga, DE Austin Matson, DB Lamont Thompson, FS Billy Newman, CB Marcus Trufant

Look for: Huge contributions from two guys who were supposed to be mainstays in 1999: LB James Price, the team's 1998 leading tackler who sat out 1999 with a wrist injury; and scrappy senior CB Curtis Martin, who was ruled academically ineligible just days before the 1999 opener. Another big addition could be DB John Williams, a touted JC transfer who was an academic casualty in 1999 but is expected to re-enroll and be ready for 2000. Two other guys to keep an eye on will be redshirt freshmen Jeremey Williams (DT) and Issac Brown (DE).

Keys to the season: If everyone stays healthy and the youngish defensive line - which got a ton of experience in 1999 - can continue its growth curve, the Cougar D should be solid. Kongaika and/or Aleaga will need to step up to fill departing Rob Meiers' penchant for making tackles-for-loss. At the ends, seniors-to-be Melvin Camarena and Anthony Adedipe will see plenty of action complimenting returning starter Austin Matson. With a year of Pac-10 experience now behind them, these two touted JC transfers could surprise. Depth at linebacker won't be a problem. Besides Smith, Price and Holden, three action-tested vets -- Serign Marong, Fred Shavies and Tupo Tuupo - as well as sophomore Melvin Simmons and redshirt freshman Al Genatone, will be fighting for time. The DBs will be first rate, particularly if John Williams returns. Depth is good on talent quotient - with Virgil Williams, Anthony Matthews and Mory Banks - but a bit thin in bodies.

THE SPECIALISTS

Starters lost: K Rian Lindell, P Kareem Anderson, RS Leaford Hackett

The good news is that Collin Henderson emerged in 1999 as a terrific return specialist. Also back are return men Billy Newman, Lamont Thompson and Curtis Nettles. The bad news is that the team's two reliable legs are gone. The Cougs may have to go the JC route to replace Anderson at punter, though young Jesse Nicassio could be the man. A couple of 1999 understudies - Nick Lambert and Anousmith Wilaikul -- will vie for Lindell's spot. Both are untested, but Wilakikul is known for booming kickoffs.

THE SCHEDULE

The three teams that started off the Cougars' 1999 season so abysmally are back on tap to open WSU's first campaign of the new millennium. The Cougs open at home with Idaho, travel to Salt Lake for a rematch with Utah, and then battle Stanford in Pullman following a bye.

However, that bye -- or else the one slated for Oct. 7 - will be filled with an as-yet-determined home game against a non-conference foe.

In addition to Stanford, the Cougs' Pac-10 home slate includes Arizona State, Oregon and Washington. The road schedule will take them to Cal, Arizona, Oregon State and USC.

For the second straight season, the Cougars won't play UCLA. ---- From Cougfan.com Date: 11/28/1999

Pac-10 Scores, Standings

Wild final weekend of regular season a good one for Pac-10 teams. On bowl front, five schools busy for holidays.

THIS WEEK'S SCORES

WSU 22, Hawaii 14 USC 45, Louisiana Tech 19 ASU 42, Arizona 27 Stanford 40, Notre Dame 39 ot

FINAL PAC-10 STANDINGS:

STANFORD 7-1 (8-3 overall) Will play Wisconsin in Rose Bowl OREGON 6-2 (8-3 overall) Off to El Paso and Sun Bowl WASHINGTON 6-2 (7-4 overall) Holiday Bowl bound, likely vs. Texas ARIZONA ST. 5-3 (6-5 overall) Trouncing of 'Cats earns Aloha Bowl bid OREGON ST. 4-4 (7-4 overall) Will play Hawaii in Oahu Bowl ARIZONA 3-5 (6-6 overall) One of the decade's greatest busts USC 3-5 (6-6 overall) Season salvaged in final two weeks CALIFORNIA 3-5 (4-7 overall) Lack of O kills solid D UCLA 2-6 (4-7 overall) What was it that Leon Bender said? UCLA is the place where prep all-americans go to get soft!

WASHINGTON ST. 1-7 (3-9 overall) Win over Hawaii a building block for 2000

Lewiston Tribune Online Monday, November 29, 1999

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK/DALE GRUMMERT ... Cougs find it better late than never

Grummert is a Tribune sportswriter It was never exactly clear whether this was an act of homage, protest or inebriation. But for some reason University of Hawaii football fans on Saturday night cast to the winds all the flotsam and jetsam within their reach, and by the third quarter the field at Aloha Stadium looked like a back alley in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day.

From the looks of it, there were fliers, hot dog wrappers, coupons, pina colada recipes, driver's licenses, last wills and testaments, NFL contracts -- all skittering along the Astroturf and looking very much like the tatters of Washington State's football season.

Like the boy who finds revelation in a curbside whirlwind in "American Beauty,'' the Cougars rose from this clutter and won their first game since Oct. 9, and their third since September 1998. Gauging the wind by studying the debris, Rian Lindell kicked the winning 25-yard field goal with 2:53 remaining in the Cougs' 22-14 win over Hawaii.

Three-thousand miles from home, in an expensive afterthought of a game, the Cougars finally executed what one must believe was their true 1999 game plan: (1) Play well on defense, (2) force turnovers and (3) keep their offensive ineptitude from getting too far out of hand.

Their fans, using the 1997 Rose Bowl season as a standard, probably expected a more flamboyant vision. Perhaps even now, they don't understand why the Cougars were held to sub-20-point games six times in their 3-9 season. In Deon Burnett, Wazzu boasted one of the most prolific freshman running backs in Pac-10 history. In Nian Taylor, it had the most productive Cougar receiver ever.

Perhaps the fans thought these were good signs. In truth, Burnett is a promising running back who, because of the Cougars' alarming lack of depth, was forced to carry an unprecedented load as a rookie. The late emergence of backup Adam Hawkins, who rushed for 103 yards Saturday, was inspiring but entirely unexpected. And if the Cougars had possessed adequate speed at receiver, they would have given up on Taylor, with his drops and fumbles, eight games ago.

By preseason camp, or surely by the third game of the season, the Cougars knew their offensive line lacked aggression and intuition, their receivers failed to pose a deep threat, and their quarterbacks lacked either the mobility (in Steve Birnbaum's case) or the experience (in Jason Gesser's case) to make up for these flaws.

For most of the season, the Cougars succeeded only in the first of those three goals -- play well on defense -- and even that was surprising given the inexperience of the defensive line, the injuries and lack of bulk at linebacker, and the utter lack of depth in the secondary. With two or three exceptions, the D gave the Cougs a chance to win every week, and considering the front line's lack of pass rush the defensive backs were stellar.

But through 11 games, the defense had forced only 13 turnovers, second-lowest in the Pac-10. Since the one thing the Cougar offense did well was score in the red zone, an occasional stripped ball by the WSU defense might have made a big difference.

"Coming into the season, we knew what we were dealing with,'' safety Torry Hollimon said after the Apple Cup loss to Washington. "We wanted to score more as a defense, and we didn't do that. There's no way we're going to shift the blame to somebody else. If the offense doesn't do it, they just don't do it. I expect the defense to get it done.''

In this bonus game in the Pacific, the Cougars intercepted three passes, forced a fumble, received nine, mostly wonderful punts from Kareem Anderson, and in general gave Gesser every chance to shine in his hometown and his starting debut. Often he didn't. After the Rainbows had adjusted to his scrambling ability, the Cougars settled into their familiar pattern of offensive wheel-spinning.

In the end, Gesser did shine. Despite a sore thumb and a twisted knee, the freshman completed a key 23-yard pass to Farwan Zubedi in the 73-yard winning field-goal drive, and handed the ball repeatedly to the surprising Hawkins, who ran through a tired Hawaii defense and over the strange array of wrappers and fliers and newsprint.

It was just like their fans said. The Cougs look darn good on paper. --- Tuesday, November 30, 1999

WSU's Gleason, Lindell honored Associated Press

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- Two Washington State University seniors were named to the second-team All-Pac-10 football team, which was announced Monday.

Outside linebacker Steve Gleason and place-kicker Rian Lindell were the only two Cougars to earn second team honors. No Cougar was chosen to the first team.

Flanker Troy Walters of Stanford and cornerback Deltha O'Neal of California are the league's Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year.

USC split end Kareem Kelly was named Freshman of the Year and Tyrone Willingham of Stanford was named Coach of the Year, honors chosen by the Pac-10 head football coaches.

Walters, a senior from College Station, Tex., set Pac-10 career records with 245 receptions and 3,995 receiving yards. He also set a conference single-season record of 1,456 receiving yards, and ranked No. 2 in the nation with 132.4 receiving yards per game.

His 1999 stats show 74 receptions for 1,456 yards (19.7) and 10 touchdowns, easily becoming the first player in Stanford history to record two 1,000-yard receiving seasons.

He also was involved in the longest passing play in Pac-10 history when he went 98 yards for a touchdown on a pass from Joe Borchard against UCLA this season. He was named to the first-team All-America by the Football Writers Association of America, and is one of three finalists for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the nation's top receiver.

Walters also is a three-time member of the Pac-10 All-Academic Team and carries a 3.21 grade point average in Communications.

O'Neal, the defensive player of the year, a senior from Milpitas, Calif., tied the national lead in interceptions with nine, including four he returned for touchdowns, setting NCAA and Pac-10 single-season records.

His career total of five interceptions returned for scores also is a Pac-10 career record and ties the NCAA career record. Twice, after an interception and a kickoff, he ran 100 yards for touchdowns.

O'Neal, who led the league with 29.2 yards per kickoff return, also was named to first-team All-America by the Football Writers Association of America.

The freshman of the year, Kelly, from Long Beach, led USC in receiving yardage and established Trojan freshman receiving records, despite starting just two games.

End of 1999 Cougar Season

As always ... "Wait until next year ..."

NEXT YEAR - 2000 Season