Jacob Thorpe: Cougars have playoff mettle, but getting there will be a constant struggle

What do you want me to say here? Perhaps the victory cigars last week were premature? Washington State won the first early season rivalry game against Washington and thus invented the Apple Cup Hangover?

It looks like Oregon State and WSU kept “Pac-12 After Dark” in the great conference divorce.

Friday’s night’s 54-52 double-overtime win over San Jose State was a festival of fun little facts that probably do not mean a lot in the big scheme of WSU’s season. Hey, that’s former Cougars QB Emmett Brown carving up the defense! Struggling kicker Dean Janikowski was the scapegoat, right up until his 52-yard field goal to send the game to overtime made him the hero.

Both teams led by two touchdowns at points in the game, and the win probability calculators online looked like heart rate monitors as the advantage surged back and forth between the teams.

It was wild, it was fun, and in the most roundabout manner, the Cougars got to 4-0 just like most people expected they would.

No loss, no foul. The big picture lesson of Friday’s game is all the playoff chatter around the Cougars misses the mark. Making the playoffs isn’t about the big games – it’s about the little ones.

Following last week’s win in Seattle, WSU has become a dark horse to take the playoff spot reserved for nonpower conference teams. Sure, the games at Boise and Fresno State will be tough, and Oregon State will be another road challenge, the thinking goes, but haven’t the Cougars already proved good enough to win?

They have, and maybe they will. But WSU’s playoff hopes are just as likely to be dashed by Utah State, New Mexico or Hawaii. College football heavyweights have learned time and again that the biggest games on the biggest stage aren’t what break your season.

Rather, it’s the sleepy games in half-full stadiums where playoff dreams die against a scrappy, highly motivated opponent.

An easy schedule? That just means WSU will be one of the marquee games of the season for each remaining opponent, and it is going to be hard for the Cougars to constantly match that energy.

Consider some recent history. For the Huskies to make the playoffs last year, they had to survive a home 15-7 clunker against an Arizona State team that won three total games. Last year, the guaranteed playoff spot the Cougars are shooting for was a slot for nonpower conference teams in a New Year’s Six bowl game. It went to Liberty University.

Liberty got there, yes, by winning its big game against New Mexico State, a 10-win team in its own right. But Liberty also had to survive some scares, like a five-point home victory to a Sam Houston team that lost its first eight games .

It will be hard for the coaches to go an entire season without a few clunkers as well.

Head coach Jake Dickert went on an accountability tour after the game, declaring himself outcoached in front of the TV cameras, to the radio crew after that, and to the print reporters at the postgame news conference.

“Obviously, a tremendous amount of errors. I take full responsibility for a lot of coaching errors tonight” Dickert said. “I told (SJSU coach Ken) Niumatalolo that I got outcoached tonight. And our guys pulled it through. The players won this game.”

Who am I to argue?

A key moment in the contest was in the second quarter, when the Cougars seemed to be pulling away from the Spartans. Up 21-10, the Cougars faked a field goal at the San Jose State 29-yard line. Janikowski was the runner on the play and sprinted for 5 yards. Sadly, he needed 11.

I don’t hate the decision to go for it there, particularly with Janikowski having some accuracy issues of late. But 11 yards seems like a lot to ask on that play, and if the first defender hadn’t brought down the kicker, another was in position to do so. The decision to throw deep in the first overtime, having already stopped SJSU’s attempt and needing only a field goal to win, also seemed needlessly risky, and the pass was intercepted.

I would like to tell you that Friday’s win showed the Cougars can win the close ones, but no. The Apple Cup proved that.

The Cougars showed they can beat themselves in myriad ways on Friday and were extremely lucky to win.

There will probably be games when the Cougars are not able to so consistently bail themselves out. If that happens in the biggest games, well, tip your cap to the better team. Avoiding a letdown against the teams you should beat is what will determine whether they have a shot at the playoffs.