PULLMAN – When you haven’t won in this game in the last six tries, you’ll take anything as a good sign.
For Steve Cook, it was a coin.
Before the Apple Cup Saturday afternoon, the Washington State defensive tackle went out on the field at Martin Stadium, looked down between his feet and found a dime.
That was all he needed to make him believe that finally, this was going to be the Cougars’ day to beat the Washington Huskies. “It could be nothing,” he said later, “but I’m a superstitious guy.”
So he gave it to teammate Bryan Olson to keep for him. When the final second ticked off the clock with the scoreboard showing the Cougars with 28 points and the Huskies with 25, Cook reclaimed the coin.
“I’ll keep that in my folder along with the program, my gloves and my jersey,” the senior from Kirkland said. “Maybe that’ll be one of my bowl trophies.”
For the Cougars, the victory – their fifth in 11 games – would have to suffice as the closest thing to a bowl trophy this season. But they’ll happily take it.
Cook had seen what looked like Cougar Apple Cup victories slip away in his years at WSU, and when the Huskies fought back from a 28-10 deficit to get within 28-25, the old stomach began to churn again.
Twenty-three seconds remained when the Huskies got the ball at their own 21 for one last shot at winning or tying.
“When you’re on the sideline and they’re down by three points and they still had some time on the clock, we’re thinking ahead like, ‘Oh, oh, here we go again,’” Cook said. “What are we going to do?”
Robb Akey told them.
The dynamic Cougar defensive coordinator called his team together on the sideline and said “This (a Husky victory) is not going to happen on our field again. Period. It’s not going to happen.”
Flashbacks? Sure, he had them, Cook said. “I was in there last year when they made the winning touchdown,” he said. “It’s planted in my memory.”
In the final seconds of Saturday’s game, he was able to flush it from his memory once and for all. Because it was he and Mkristo Bruce, a sophomore lineman from Renton, who got to the elusive Husky quarterback Isaiah Stanback for a 7-yard loss. And on the final play of the game, Stanback ran out of bounds after a 9-yard gain as time expired.
There were more than 34,000 fans in Martin Stadium on a cold, dry day, and when the last second died, it seemed as if half of them spilled onto the field to celebrate. It had been a long time coming.
“These fans made me feel like we won the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Anything Bowl,” Bruce said. “These are the best fans in the nation … and I feel like we haven’t been doing our part in winning for them, and to see how happy they were at the end of the game was like the season just finally paid off.”
When someone asked coach Bill Doba if he felt as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders, he quipped, “I don’t know about that. It’s only my second. Hell, I’m .500. I’ll take that.”
As would Akey, who was rumored to be a candidate for the head coaching job at his alma mater, Weber State, but said after the game, “I’m planning on being here. I don’t want to go back to (Division) I-AA football.”
And the Cougars don’t want him to go.
“Coach Akey has a way of being inspirational, even when he’s not trying to be,” Cook said. “I think he’s got a certain spark that every defensive coordinator needs to have.”
“Akey,” Bruce added, “is the kind of coach you don’t want to disappoint so you play hard and do whatever you can for him.”
Quarterbacks coach Timm Rosenbach always enjoyed playing the Huskies and had the satisfaction of beating them in 1988. “This,” he said of Saturday’s battle, “was one of those games you wanted to be playing in instead of coaching.”
As it was, he had a pretty good man directing the Cougars. Alex Brink, the redshirt freshman from Eugene, put together a solid performance in his fifth career start, completing 15-of-24 passes for 240 yards and two touchdowns. In a game that can shatter nerves, he seemed confident throughout the day.
“He has tremendous poise for a freshman,” Rosenbach said. “He proved that tonight. He did something a lot of guys have been trying to do here for a long time.”
Trying and failing.
Now the bad streak is over. “We ended it, by god,” Doba said. “We’re going to start a new one.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.