John Blanchette: Cougars define resiliency

PASADENA, Calif. – You’re feeling lucky, right? How could you not be feeling lucky?

So how about a little Bowl Roulette?

It’s your credit card and your best guess at a destination and your football team’s knack for the incredible, the inspirational and the downright weird pitted against, oh, common sense and normalcy.

How can you lose? Washington State certainly can’t.

Look at what happened here in the Rose Bowl on Saturday evening. With the football season on its delicate fulcrum in front of 53,058 witnesses, a backup kicker makes his first field goal – ever. Of course, he had only tried one other – in high school, at homecoming. Let’s hope that miss didn’t cost him a date for the dance. He’s been killing time in community college and daydreaming on the sidelines ever since, waiting for another chance.

Naturally, these Cougs gave it to him.

Meanwhile, the volunteers are being solicited to punt. Slotback Michael Bumpus answers. He’s taking practice snaps in a tunnel under the Rose Bowl while the coaches try not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Because, you know, he’s the guy who returns punts.

“It was like junior high at halftime, where you’re lining guys up,” said coach Bill Doba.

You know what football is in junior high, don’t you? Fun. And that’s all it is. But it couldn’t be any more fun than the Cougars had in a 37-15 pasting of UCLA, and that’s even factoring in the obvious bummer of another battalion of players who left on crutches or swaddled in ice.

So where is all this fun taking you? Las Vegas? Hawaii? That Emerald dealie – wherever it is? Dusty El Paso?

Or did you watch mighty USC fall to Oregon State on the tube Saturday and allow yourself to start thinking bigger?

Yes, yes, yes – it’s all very hypothetical still, and even talking about it tempts fate. Wazzu’s sixth victory here only made the Cougars bowl eligible, not bowl delivered. There is still the odd mathematical chance that they don’t finish high enough in the standings to be selected for one of the Pac-10’s six guaranteed placements in the damnable slotting that has taken over the postseason business.

Silly. Based on resiliency alone, the Cougs should be in the BCS.

Last week, all the defensive tackles went down. This week, running backs Derrell Hutsona and Dwight Tardy couldn’t finish the game, and defensive end Mkristo Bruce left the field after every stop as if he were practicing up his peg-leg pirate walk for trick-or-treat. The Cougars tried to sit their heart-and-soul defender with a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter, but when UCLA finally made its initial first down of the second half – with just under 12 minutes left – out he came again to run down the Bruins tailback Derrick Williams after a 30-yard pass play.

Then Bruce limped off again, and Tyron Brackenridge all but settled the issue with a red-zone interception.

“If MK doesn’t track him down, we don’t get that interception,” marveled safety Eric Frampton. “He was in and out the whole game, I know, and he’s in pain the whole game, but he’s a ballplayer.”

Well, they all are. It’s easy to forget with all the melodrama of The Next Backup to Save the Day how much the Cougars are doing right. On Saturday, this included quarterback Alex Brink and his baaaad band of receivers strafing the No. 10 defense in the country for 405 yards with continual downfield assaults. And the offensive line picking itself up from some spotty early play to dominate up front. And the defense making UCLA quarterback Patrick Cowan look like the shaky second-stringer he is.

“But when you have to put the backup kickers in,” acknowledged guard Sean O’Connor, “you’re really starting to live a little on the edge.”

The edge? You’re the cartoon guy hanging on that lone branch growing out of the face of a cliff.

But when punter Darryl Blunt turned up with racing heartbeat before the game and struggling place-kicker – and backup punter – Loren Langley pulled a quad muscle in the second quarter, the Cougars went back to their sack of spare parts. Bumpus, it turned out, had punted in high school, though he left it off his resume.

“I was a punter who punted,” he joked, “but if it ain’t there, go for what you know.”

And as for Romeen Abdollmohammadi, well, his wait has been as long as his name – with pit stops at Shoreline and Everett community colleges. He didn’t even walk on at Wazzu until he got goosebumps walking by the stadium last spring and asked the coaching staff for a chance to kick.

Saturday, he left the goosebumps on the sideline on his 31-yard field goal that put the Cougs up eight in the third quarter.

“When I went out there, it didn’t really hit me until the ball was snapped that I had to kick this field goal,” he said.

Hmm. He might want to pass that tip on to Langley.

“This game was a little ridiculous with all the things going on that nobody expected,” said O’Connor.

No more ridiculous than a fan making bowl plans without a definitive destination.

But go ahead on. After all the Cougs have been through, you have to be feeling lucky.