From Pullman -- Because next week's game against Arizona State is being played on a Thursday, the Washington State football team has moved its weekly schedule ahead three days. That mean's tonight's practice was treated as a Sunday practice, and the Cougars won't practice on Saturday (Monday). Don't worry, you're not the only one who's confused.

The team ran through various drills for just over an hour before ending practice. No players were limited other than long snapper Ryan Saparto and offensive lineman Jacob Seydel.Receiver Kristoff Williams is back with the team and caught a couple passes from quarterback Connor Halliday.

After practice we spoke to defensive line coach Joe Salave'a. Read the highlights from the Q&A after the jump.

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Defensive Line Coach Joe Salave'a

(Are the defensive linemen fresher after a few days off?)

We’ll find out. You always want to take that route and see if we can get our legs back a little bit but I thought our focus -- guys came in and watched film and watched themselves so it was good.

(Having had more time to watch film this week, what are you seeing?)

Still had a couple more opportunities that could have at least swung the momentum our way, but we let it get away from us. I’m a firm believe that you don’t compete to get runner up. We’ve got to maximize our opportunities, that’s why it’s so critical that our practice quality of work needs to be at a premium.

When we looked at the game from a week ago our guys felt even worse seeing that we missed opportunities that could have swung the game our way.

(How do you fix that?)

Our world is a tunnel vision world and for what we’re trying to instill in our players, the opportunity to get right, it gets back to coach Leach’s philosophy. It’s about us and our ability to worry about the things that we need to take care of. And that’s minimizing hesitations, playing with great effort and being the most excited to play.

 

 

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