John Blanchette: Average shouldn’t be rewarded

PULLMAN – Time to update the Washington State rally cry to … finished.

As in done.

Spent.

Co … oked.

You thought I was going to say something else, right?

Well, it isn’t anything like that, really. The fatalism and inevitability which spawned that old slur are completely contrary to the notion that the Cougar football family carried into this November – that there was no way they wouldn’t be discussing the relative destination merits of El Paso, Las Vegas, San Francisco or Honolulu today.

Because this team had learned to finish, right?

Uh, sorry.

This team is finished.

Done.

Co … llapsed.

To complete an end-of-season swoon of almost unfathomable Cougness on Saturday, Wazzu surrendered a passel of astonishing plays – Immaculate Reception-quality in one case – to a team heretofore incapable of making any plays at all. The upshot of Washington’s 35-32 Apple Cup triumph at sold out Martin Stadium isn’t just that the Cougars aren’t, in all likelihood, going to a bowl game after all, it’s that they shouldn’t be going to a bowl game.

OK, maybe the upshot is that there shouldn’t be bowl rewards for incredibly average teams, but with 32 games to fill that’s exactly the case – which is how the Cougs can even hope to hope.

Don’t. Bless all you achieved in September and October, fellas, but it needs to be over.

Not that they’re willing to let go. Coach Bill Doba – suggesting the Cougars “played their fannies off” even as they gave up 35 points to a team that scored exactly three against pitiful Stanford a week ago – pointed out that not every team sprints to the finish in college football.

“Look at the scores throughout the country,” he said. “It happens all the time.”

Well, yes. Colorado last year comes to mind. But it’s doubtful any coach would want to enter that into evidence, for obvious reasons.

Likewise, quarterback Alex Brink didn’t hesitate to endorse Wazzu’s worthiness.

“Look at what this team has done, battling through injuries and giving itself a chance when nobody thought we’d be here to begin with,” he said. “People are going to say it’s a disappointment and, yeah, in some cases it is. But tell me before the season if (this) is a disappointment.”

No, that’s not how it works. Yes, it’s a two-win gain on the disaster of 2005. But show me one Coug who, in August, set 6-6 as a goal this season.

Then find me one who thought it was OK three weeks ago.

The Cougars have endured their share of evil Novembers, but there hasn’t been a disintegration like this since 1989, when they went from 6-1 and ranked 15th to 6-5 and home for Christmas. Then it got blamed on a single injury – to receiver Tim Stallworth. By comparison, these Cougars endured savage attrition, but they had endured it through a 6-3 start and were looking at three games remaining against teams that, at the time, were 5-11 in the Pac-10.

“But I said a long time ago, we could win the rest or lose the rest,” Doba said. “I didn’t think we’d lose the last three. I thought we’d get this one, obviously.”

Maybe that was part of the problem, again.

“I don’t know if we shocked them,” said receiver Cody Ellis, who certainly did with the 64-yard catch-and-run of a pass that hit him in the left hand and left knee before he corralled it inches from the turf. “But I don’t think they thought we were a good team. ‘They’re the Huskies, they lost six straight.’ We just lost to Stanford and they probably figured they had it easy, cake, walk right into a bowl game.

“So, yeah, they’ve got to be a little shocked.”

The Cougars, from Doba on down, were satisfied to chalk this one up to those three long touchdown plays, the 89-yard kick return and the blocked punt for a touchdown – to the point that they were regarded with a shrug. But important in a much more subtle way was the defensive hiccup when the Huskies were pinned back on their own 4-yard line heading into the wind and managed to punch the ball out to the 50, flipping field position – which led, indirectly, to the blocked-punt TD.

See, not only did they not make as many big plays as UW, the Cougs didn’t make enough little ones – and that included going absolutely nowhere on the final, deciding series.

Defense held this team together through the first half of the season, then staggered. The offense never truly found itself. And the special teams were routinely horrible. All of that was true Saturday, as well.

But it was also true that Wazzu took its foot off the mental gas pedal after beating UCLA – “a lot of guys,” said safety Eric Frampton, referencing the one more win needed to ensure a bowl trip, “figured it was a gimme.” And that’s a devastating circumstance for a program desperate to play in the postseason again.

That’s not finishing. That’s flopping.

“We held our destiny in our hands,” Brink confessed, “and we flat out threw it away.”

Co … rrect.