Everett, Wash. Published: Thursday, October 9, 2008
Cougars' scoring streak in jeopardy
Associated Press
PULLMAN -- Washington State has played a lot of lousy football games since Sept. 15, 1984, but one thing has remained constant.
It has scored in all 279 of them. Sometimes 3 points. Sometimes 77 points. But points in every game since that 44-0 loss at Ohio State.
That's the second-longest scoring streak in the nation, but it's in jeopardy as this year's team struggles with one of the country's worst offenses.
The Cougars (1-5, 0-3 Pac-10) have averaged only 10 points per game against their five major college foes this season, and twice have been held to 3 points.
They rank 113th out of the 119 teams in the BCS in scoring, averaging 16.3 points per game. That average is inflated by the 48 points they scored against Portland State of the FCS. Otherwise, they've scored 50 points in five losses.
New coach Paul Wulff played for the Cougars from 1986-89, a time when the streak was in its nascent stages. But he says a scoring streak that is older than most of his players is just not something he can worry about right now.
"I hadn't even though about it, to be honest," Wulff said. "We have to work on getting better. That's more a priority for us."
Wulff and offensive coordinator Todd Sturdy arrived in December and announced they would implement the no-huddle offense that worked well for them at Eastern Washington. But they've shelved that plan because of injuries and lack of experience at quarterback.
The problems with this year's offense are obvious. The offensive line is undersized and has been plagued by injuries, so Cougar quarterbacks have been sacked 18 times and hurried 19 times.
The top two quarterbacks, Gary Rogers and Kevin Lopina, were knocked out by injuries in the Portland State game.
That left freshman Marshall Lobbestael, who had never even practiced with the first team, to learn the job on the fly.
Washington State plays at Oregon State this weekend, and Beavers coach Mike Riley has sympathy for what the Cougars are going through.
"When a team does lose a quarterback, it's definitely a factor in what they are going to become offensively," Riley said.
Because of practice time limitations, developing one effective quarterback is hard and developing two is even harder, he said.
"To have a third guy ready to go is really, really hard," Riley said. "Experience is such a major factor."
Plagued with bad throws and dropped passes, WSU's passing attack is good for only 193 yards per game, and has thrown 13 interceptions.
The running game is largely in the hands of veteran Dwight Tardy and a rotating cast of helpers. It is producing only 105 yards per game, 103rd in the nation, and an average of 2.9 yards per carry.
Receiver Brandon Gibson is WSU's main offensive weapon, but he is blanketed by enemy defenders and has averaged 12.8 yards on his 36 catches. with just two touchdowns.
For years, a shutout of Washington State appeared about as likely as bumping into a Lehman Brothers executive at Wal-Mart. Washington State produced a trove of outstanding quarterbacks -- Timm Rosenbach, Mark Rypien, Drew Bledsoe, Ryan Leaf, Jason Gesser, and Alex Brink among them -- plus running backs and receivers who could always put points on the board.
The current players were not even born when Ohio State hung the last goose egg on the Cougars 24 years ago.
As a result, the standard item in the team's weekly press release about the streak growing by one more game was mostly ignored. This year has brought it to the fore as yet another sign of the team's woes.
Twice the Cougars have been held to one long Nico Grasu field goal, in a 66-3 loss to California and a 28-3 loss at UCLA. They scored 13 points against Oklahoma State, 17 against Baylor and 14 against Oregon.
Only Michigan has a longer active scoring streak than the Cougars, at 293 games. Third is Florida at 248, followed by Colorado at 240 games.
The WSU streak is actually the fourth-longest in history, trailing Brigham Young's 361 games from 1975-2003, followed by Michigan, and Texas at 282 games from 1980-2004.
In Pacific-10 play, WSU has scored in 257 consecutive games since 1975, the longest streak in the league.
