Doba, Cougs set to start
PULLMAN — Bill Doba’s first crack at being at a head coach in the Pac-10 went awfully well, garnering co-coach of the year honors in the conference and a 10-3 overall mark.
Now Doba gets his second shot, with plenty of question marks and a boatload of new starters. And the coach says he’s more ready this time around for what’s to come.
“I’m probably more relaxed about it and I think the kids know me better and what to expect from me,” says Doba, who will meet with his team for the first time today before stepping onto the practice field for the first time this season on Monday morning.
Doba and the Washington State program enter this year’s camp with a leg up on some past years, if not in terms of experience then at least in terms of cohesiveness. More than 70 players spent the majority of the summer on campus working out together, an effort that Doba says was first spearheaded by last season’s senior class before the Cougars string of three consecutive 10-win seasons.
With so many Cougars working out over the summer, Doba says he can shift the focus of camp — worrying less about conditioning and locking in on game preparation.
“What we used to do in the past was the first two weeks of two-a-days, it was like a death march,” Doba says. “Well now they are in shape. They report in shape. In the old days, after about three or four days of two-a-days, your starters had pulled hamstrings or quads, or they were so sore they could hardly practice. So you were working with (backups) and the (starters) weren’t really getting the work to prepare them.
“And then, if you didn’t back off quick enough they were still leg-weary when you hit the first game. A number of years ago, we went to Michigan and our players looked like they were running in sand out there.”
This fall, WSU will vary the intensity of practices, with walkthroughs sprinkled in among the harder workouts to keep players fresh. The Cougars have 23 days on the practice field (about one-third of them with two sessions) before traveling to Albuquerque, N.M., to play New Mexico in the season opener on Sept. 3.
Still, even with nearly a month before the first game, Doba says there is a sense of urgency to the first week of the camp. With 17 new starters on offense and defense, the Cougars still have a few starting spots open for competition.
Doba says he wants the blanks on his two-deep chart filled in quickly, so units can start working together before it’s too late for the opener at New Mexico. The Cougars also need to spend time with their 28 new players, determining who will step in this season. The players most likely to contribute are junior college transfers Tyron Brecknridge at cornerback and Jerome Harrison at running back, as well as true freshman Michael Bumpus at wide receiver.
“We want to really spend a lot of time looking at the newcomers and see if any of those can help us, especially the junior college kids,” Doba says. “We’d like to get solidified as quickly as possible.”