PULLMAN — After a road defeat to unranked New Mexico, the Washington State University football team dropped to No. 25 in the Associated Press Top 25 released Sunday morning.
The Cougars slipped six spots from last week’s poll. It’s the fourth straight week in the rankings for WSU, which blew a 14-point lead Saturday in Albuquerque, handing the Lobos their first win over a ranked team in more than 20 years.
In Sunday’s poll, 36 voters left the Cougs off their ballots. Ten voted them at No. 25, eight voted them at No. 24, and they received one vote as high as No. 19.
Its College Football Playoff hopes now wiped out, WSU will turn its attention to the next round of CFP rankings, which release on Tuesday evening. It’s possible the Cougs will drop from No. 18 to out of those rankings . The Cougars’ bowl destination will take focus for their final two regular-season games, at Oregon State next weekend and home against Wyoming the following Saturday.
Game rewind
In Saturday’s game, UNM dual-threat quarterback Devon Dampier piled up 193 yards and three touchdowns on 28 carries, lots of them designed quarterback keepers.
The troubling part for WSU, though, is in how obvious New Mexico made its offensive gameplan. Dampier is clearly more comfortable as a rusher than a passer — he has more interceptions (12) than touchdowns (11) — and as this game unfolded, never did the Lobos try to hide it. They sat Dampier in the shotgun, mixed in some jet sweeps to running back Eli Sanders and watched that duo carve up WSU’s defense.
So for the Cougars, what was the problem? What prevented them from stopping an offense that made its intentions clear as day?
“There wasn’t enough adjustments,” WSU coach Jake Dickert said. “They do a good job of cracking, making your quarter safeties come down and make the plays. But at some point, we gotta get more aggressive and try to just get the ball out of his hands and make someone else beat us. And we were never able to do that.”
What was the reasoning behind that?
“We’ll watch the tape,” Dickert said.
It was clear that at least immediately after the game, neither Dickert nor Thornton had a firm grasp on the reasons behind their team’s inability to stop the Lobos’ running game. For the game, UNM totaled 360 rushing yards, good for an average carry of 7.3 yards. Dampier averaged 6.9 yards per rush, and Sanders turned in 8.3 yards per rush.
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