Why WSU’s Christian Hilborn and Keith Brown decided to stay in Pullman

PULLMAN – As Washington State practice wrapped up behind him, players in crimson and gray jerseys chatting and laughing and getting a few last reps in for the day, Christian Hilborn couldn’t help but smile.

WSU’s most tenured offensive lineman, Hilborn, seems more talkative than usual, a wide grin plastered on his face for nearly the entirety of a five-minute interview. The redshirt senior is happy to talk about all manner of topics, but the first is his return to the Cougars while many of his teammates left over the offseason.

In December, former head coach Jake Dickert took the same job at Wake Forest, where he took several of the Cougars’ best players. On the offensive line, that included center Devin Kylany, guard Rod Tialavea, tackle Fa’alili Fa’amoe, even rising sophomore AJ Hasson, whose promising future was highly regarded by that coaching staff.

But Hilborn chose to stay. In his own words, that decision came down to his teammates.

“I genuinely love every single one of these guys,” Hilborn said. “I feel like it would have been a disservice to leave. I didn’t really wanna leave in the first place. The coaching staff, man, there’s something different about them. There genuinely is something different about these guys. I really, really, really enjoy these guys.”

A few moments later, Hilborn was asked if he could put a finger on what he likes most about the Cougs’ new coaching staff, led by head coach Jimmy Rogers.

“I really couldn’t,” Hilborn said. “With the last half, I liked them, and then these guys came in here, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I really like these guys.’ I don’t know. Just something different about them.”

In any case, Hilborn’s return adds up to a boon for WSU. In four years with the Cougars, Hilborn has played 40 games, including 33 starts. Last fall, he fell out of the rotation for a brief two-game stint, but that’s been one of the rare blights on his resume. Otherwise, his has been a solid presence for Washington State.

Last year, Hilborn allowed only one sack on 408 pass-blocking snaps, according to Pro Football Focus data. That includes one four-game stretch in which he didn’t allow any pressures. His best outing came in WSU’s road loss to New Mexico, where he earned a PFF pass-blocking grade of 91.0, which helped the Cougars finish the regular season with a team pass-blocking grade of 88.3 – tops in the country.

As for who will surround Hilborn on the Cougs’ new front five, the only shoo-in seems to be fellow redshirt senior Brock Dieu, whose versatility has keyed his emergence in recent years. In 2023, he burst onto the scene at right guard, which is where he started the first 10 games of the 2024 season.

But when injuries befell the unit, Dieu moved to center, where he started the final three games of the season, including the Holiday Bowl.

Other candidates to earn starting roles on WSU’s offensive line this fall include redshirt sophomore Ashton Tripp, redshirt freshman Noah Dunham and redshirt junior Jonny Lester, all of whom have taken first-team reps in the few practices Rogers has opened to the media.

“Noah’s been doing a great job. Jonny’s just – I mean, really, everybody’s been making leaps of improvement in my eyes,” Hilborn said. “Everybody’s really stepped up to the roles that they’ve been asked to do, and I think they’ve all been excelling at it.”

On the other side of the ball, veteran linebacker Keith Brown made a similar decision, opting to stay out of the transfer portal and complete his career at WSU. Brown started his career spending the 2021 and 2022 seasons at Oregon, then transferred to Louisville for the 2023 season before moving closer to his hometown of Lebanon, Oregon, to play in Pullman.

Since arriving in town, Brown has been open about the development he’s made as a person, transforming from a teenager whose eyes widened at the idea of stuff – “When you’re 15, 16, coming out of high school, you wanna just go to the flashiest, coolest place possible,” Brown said last season – to an adult who wants to feel fulfilled in deeper, more meaningful ways.

He looks poised to deliver on that evolution. Last season, Brown totaled 26 tackles (2.5 for loss) in 13 games, coming on strongly toward the end of the year. He used his speed to turn the Cougars’ pass rush from invisible to undeniable, and his sound tackling technique came in handy for a defense that often languished on that front.

All of the sudden the most veteran linebacker for the Cougs, Brown said he’s begun to think about the game in a selfless way, pondering the ways he can play for his younger teammates – “for the team,” he said, “and the guys behind me.”

That kind of approach led Brown to decide to stay at WSU, where he’s slated to finish his college career trying to lead a largely green defense through what figures to be a challenging schedule.

“Obviously, I’ve transferred quite a bit in my career,” Brown said. “For me, I just kind of wanted to finish what I started somewhere. I really, truly fell in love with Pullman. I wanted to leave here with some sort of legacy or name from this place.

“Just wanted to finish what I started here and play my last year.”