LOS ANGELES — For eight consecutive games last season, the Washington State Cougars were winners.

They beat Oregon for the second year in a row. They thrashed Stanford, an eventual 10-win team, by 26 points on the road. Then they beat a bunch more teams that weren’t any good, though such programs have managed to trip up the Cougars in the past.

Yet the shine of that winning streak faded in the season’s final three games. Pac-12 South champion Colorado piled up yardage in a 38-24 victory in Boulder. Washington throttled the Cougars in a winner-takes-the-North-division Apple Cup. But the greatest indignation came in the season finale, a Holiday Bowl loss to a Minnesota team that only weeks prior had been near revolt.

Add to that another season-opening loss to an FCS team — this time Eastern Washington, in Pullman — and the Cougars’ 2016 identity is that of a capable squad not good enough to hang with the Pac-12’s elite.

Jamal Morrow, a fifth-year senior running back and one of WSU’s player representatives at this year’s Pac-12 media days in Hollywood, would like to write a different ending to his final collegiate season.

“I felt like we got really complacent,” Morrow said. “We just seemed like we were thinking, ‘OK, we’re Washington State, people are going to respect the logo.’ At the same time, we’ve got to realize, we’re Washington State. We’ve been down in the gutter of college football.

“We have to find a way to continue to raise the bar when it gets to the end of the season, because it’s a long season. We just started getting a little complacent and felt like every time we stepped on the field, we were going to win the game. So that’s something we worked on this offseason by continuing to find ways to raise the bar.”

It seems possible. Picked by media to finish third in the Pac-12 North, the Cougars return one of the country’s most prolific passers, fifth-year senior Luke Falk, in addition to a group of experienced running backs and nine defensive starters.

They did lose two of their most important offensive players — receivers Gabe Marks and River Cracraft — but coach Mike Leach hopes the Cougars’ experience will help them overcome the early and late-season lulls that foiled them a year ago.

“Last year, we were predominantly freshmen and sophomores, and I think we struggled as far as adjusting to being on the field for the first time in some cases,” Leach said. “We did some really good things at practice, then we go out there, first game, college football for the first time, all of a sudden eyes got wide, and we tried to do too much. But I think we assembled ourselves pretty good as a team and played together.”

Indeed, Falk tied his own WSU single-season record last year with 38 touchdown passes (to 11 interceptions), and completed 70 percent of his passes en route to 4,468 passing yards. WSU’s running backs — mostly Morrow, James Williams and Gerard Wicks — combined for 31 total touchdowns and 2,591 yards of total offense.

The defense is led by fifth-year senior linebacker Peyton Pelluer, a fixture at middle linebacker and the team’s leading tackler last season with 93.

The early portion of WSU’s schedule is favorable; the Cougars open against Montana State — yes, another Big Sky team — followed by consecutive home games against Boise State, Oregon State, Nevada and preseason Pac-12 favorite USC on a Friday night.

November holds a far tougher stretch of games, as WSU finishes with a home game against Stanford, a trip to Utah and a trip to defending Pac-12 North champion Washington.

Considering how the last two seasons have started, nobody at WSU is thinking past the season opener, heavily favored as the Cougars will be.

“That’s been a focus-point, too,” Morrow said. “Going into the first game and going in there with that confidence, like, hey, we’re going to win this game.

“That’s something that we’ve definitely been talking about and when we get to fall camp, I’m pretty sure we’ll keep on harping on it, too. That’s something I really want to definitely do — start the season off 1-0, and get it going.”