Cougars pounce

CORVALLIS, Ore. – This was not the beautiful win Washington State was hoping to get in its third trip to Oregon State in the last three years.

What the Cougars got was something different in style but something equally important in stature – a second Pac-10 football victory this season and a fourth win overall that moves them ever so closer to postseason dreams.

“If our kids plan on going to a bowl game, we had to get this thing,” WSU head coach Bill Doba said after the Cougars eked out a 13-6 road victory. “Because we’ve got a couple toughies coming to town, and we’re two games away. That’s our goal. We want to get some place warm in December or January.”

Of the Cougars’ six games in 2006, perhaps none exhibited the differences between this year’s team and last year’s so clearly. A year ago WSU came to Reser Stadium at 3-0 and built a 17-point first-half lead, only to blow the lead in a 44-33 loss.

This time around, WSU managed to build a much smaller lead but held onto it with some gritty play in the fourth quarter that kept the home team on the wrong end of the scoreboard.

“Last year I think they would have scored and we would have lost,” said linebacker Scott Davis, who made two key sacks on Oregon State’s last offensive possession. “It was getting scary, but we knew we were a different defense than we were last year.”

At 4-2 (2-1 Pac-10), the Cougars can now harbor legitimate hopes to spend the holidays in a sunny locale. WSU needs only a 2-4 finish to be bowl-eligible, even though Saturday’s win in Reser Stadium was anything but the stuff of a football coach’s dreams.

“We get that kind of luck, we can beat the Chicago Bears,” Doba mused.

The Cougars controlled much of the game against a struggling Beavers team (2-3, 0-2), but the game remained close throughout as only WSU’s Jason Hill managed to cross the goal line with the ball. Both Oregon State’s Alexis Serna and WSU’s Loren Langley made a pair of field goals to account for the rest of the points.

All the while, neither offense established much of anything, with six combined turnovers and one of the day’s biggest offensive plays coming from a botched punt.

Hill’s third-quarter touchdown put WSU up 13-3, and in an eerie flashback to last season, the wide receiver came out of the game after making a big third-quarter play with an injury. Hill bruised his right shoulder early in the game, aggravating it on the touchdown catch and sending him to the sideline for the final 20 minutes. His status for next week’s game against California is uncertain, but Hill – who missed part of the week leading up to this game tending to his mother in a San Francisco hospital following a heart attack – indicated he thought he would be ready to play six days from now.

Unlike a season ago, Hill’s injury didn’t doom the Cougars because their defense dominated the Beavers offense. To more than one observer, it seemed as if that Hill touchdown would be enough to win the game.

“The way things were going, I felt like, yes, we could handle the situation,” defensive coordinator Robb Akey said. “And there I really did.”

Still, Oregon State gave itself a chance down the stretch, getting close to the red zone in the final minutes and needing a touchdown to tie the game.

But as it did all evening, the Cougars defense held firm and forced a turnover on downs, allowing the offense to run out the clock on four handoffs to DeMaundray Woolridge.

And, after losing on the road at Oregon State in each of the last two seasons, that script was more than enough to satisfy the Cougars on their trip home Saturday night.

“It’s really important,” Doba said.

“It was a crazy game, but we finished, finally, in the end.”