Analysis: Win over Ducks not a fluke

PULLMAN — For much of the season players and coaches have been hinting that this Washington State team might be pretty good.

Now, more than two-and-a-half months after the start of fall camp, they finally have their evidence.

A series of close calls and near misses that extend back to the start of the 2005 season now appear that they may have been building blocks for something better, something that the curtain is now pulling back to reveal over the next month.

At 5-3, WSU isn’t guaranteed anything. The Cougars need another win to qualify for bowl consideration and have barely grabbed a piece of real estate on the college football radar – a handful of votes in the AP, coaches and Harris polls helped boost WSU to No. 25 in the BCS standings.

But in beating Oregon 34-23 and pasting the then-No. 16 Ducks 27-3 through three quarters, the Cougars have every reason and gave every reason to suggest that their successes thus far are not flukes, and that their failures – which all came to teams in the top 12 – are not so much damning defeats as they are realistic setbacks.

As it stands – that is, barring a fantastic collapse – the Cougars will be going to a bowl game this December for the first time in three seasons and they will be considered a threat in every regular-season game left on the schedule.

The hard part, it seems, is over since the Cougars won’t see another ranked team before a bowl game and two of the final four games are back in Martin Stadium. This week’s road game at UCLA could be the toughest test remaining, and the Bruins will have to deal with a letdown factor after blowing a last-minute lead at Notre Dame on Saturday.

“This team’s had to carry a lot of the baggage of the past couple teams, but it’s a group of different guys,” quarterback Alex Brink said after Saturday’s win.

The Cougars have been dragging with them the defeats of 2004 and 2005, to be sure. WSU has molded its 2006 squad around the concept of erasing the shortcomings of those teams.

And beating a ranked opponent has given the Cougars a reason to claim that they have cleaned some of those skeletons from the closet. Now they must deal with the eyes of their opponents, who will undoubtedly view the Cougars – to echo a comment from receiver Jason Hill – as the hunted, not the hunter.

Dealing with that will be a theme of the last four games, and their success in doing so will prove if this team is merely improved from seasons past, or if it is truly ready to play with the big boys.