WSU Cougars have rebuilt expectations at midway point

PULLMAN – As the college football schedule gets ever more complex, what with conference championships, playoffs, intermittent bye games and the like, finding a season’s midpoint can be tough.

For Washington State, though, now seems like as good a time as any to declare the halfway mark. WSU (4-2, 3-0 Pac-12) has played half of its regular-season games and already had its bye. While WSU could still be playing football in the new year, the first seven weeks held enough drama, growth, story lines and storybook endings for an entire season. Maybe two.

“Every game is big. It’s really tough to win in college football. On any Saturday, anything can happen,” quarterback Luke Falk said. “To win the last three games have been huge and I really don’t believe we’ve played our best game yet.”

The Cougars, winners of four straight for the first time since 2003, have come so very far since they broke camp in Lewiston back in mid-August. In one respect, though, they are right back where they started.

WSU, which began the season with so much hype after last year’s nine wins, finally regained the target on its back. Even the wins are not always satisfying anymore. Now the manner of victory matters, too.

“It was a great team win but it’s on to the next one. I think it was too close. I think we could have put more points on them and held them to (fewer) points, especially in the fourth quarter,” linebacker Peyton Pelluer said after Saturday’s win over UCLA.

The Cougars are favored by nearly a touchdown in next weekend’s game at Arizona State. Even though the Cougars have not won in Tempe in 15 years. Even though ASU is 5-2 and has not lost at home since Oregon beat them in triple-overtime on Oct. 29 of last year.

Think about that: WSU is expected to be the first team in 51 weeks to beat the Sun Devils in their place. Expectations have not been this high in Pullman since, well, since before the Cougars dropped their first two games, shaking up their eager fan base.

True, WSU was favored last week against UCLA. But the Bruins were expected to be without their starting quarterback, have one of the country’s worst offensive lines and had been generally anemic all season. ASU is one of only four Pac-12 teams with five or more wins, and has a rushing defense that trails only the Cougars in yards allowed per game.

That’s a stat that actually matters against the 2016 Cougars, who have exactly as many rushing touchdowns as passing touchdowns (16) and just won a game in which they did not throw for a single score.

“We can do it other ways and if we win every game but I don’t throw for another touchdown, I’ll be happy,” Falk said. “Just do whatever we can to win. It shows we’ve got a lot of weapons.”

This is not to say that the four teams the Cougars have vanquished in succession have taken the Cougars lightly. Oregon and UCLA likely had payback on their minds after losing to the Cougars at home last year, and Stanford’s players doubtlessly respected the Cougars after eking out a two-point win in Pullman last year.

There is little doubt Idaho took its Pac-12 neighbor seriously.

But with wins come other distractions, ones that perhaps quieted down after WSU’s suboptimal start to the season. Already, observers around the conference are pointing to the Apple Cup as a game that could have Rose Bowl implications for both teams and the Cougars have five more games to focus on before then.

The Cougars never stopped believing they were one of the conference’s toughest teams. Now they have to win when everybody else knows it, too.