Bruins Show Washington State No Respect : Despite Recent Success, Cougars Wilt When UCLA Turns Up the Heat

Until Saturday, Washington State was in the thick of the Rose Bowl race and starting--just starting--to get some respect.

A tie with the Pac-10 leader, Arizona State, and a victory over USC had the Cougars thinking big.

And then came UCLA.

Stop the music.

Beforehand, the betting line that favored UCLA by almost two touchdowns seemed ludicrous. After UCLA had won, 54-16, it was time to stop and re-evaluate this Cougar team.

So which games were the flukes? Which games are to be believed?

Washington State Coach Jim Walden emerged very quietly from a very quiet Cougar locker room to say that his team just had a very, very bad day.

“We just got the hell beat out of us by a very good football team,” Walden said. “There’s no nice way to put it. I felt at halftime that we were in real trouble.

“It was a couple of things. This is not an excuse, and I don’t want it to be taken as an excuse, but we just couldn’t handle the heat. We have no way to practice for 90-degree heat. It’s been a high of about 62 in Pullman for a couple of weeks.

“When you combine that with the good execution of a fine team like UCLA, that’s the difference. I could feel our energy level being expended.”

Asked if he thought the game might have gone differently in Pullman, Wash., Walden said, “Who knows? If it had started the same, and we were up 16-7, our crowd might have swayed the momentum. We wouldn’t have had the heat. Maybe it would have ended up 47-16.”

But Walden, who at times can be quite flip, was playing it pretty straight after the sobering loss.

“There’s really nothing to say to the team except let’s get dressed and get going. We still have some football games to play,” he said. “It’s no disgrace to get beat by a good football team.

“All the Rose Bowl things go flying away, but, what the hell, we still have four games to play.”

Until Saturday, Washington State was one of five teams with just one loss in the conference chasing Arizona State, which had only the tie with Washington State against its record. There was no reason to think positive after its second loss. Washington State’s record went to 2-2-1 in the Pac-10, 3-3-1 overall.

Washington State was looking good against the Bruins, too, early on. UCLA scored first, but Washington State came right back with a solid 87-yard drive for a touchdown and went ahead by taking advantage of a recovered fumble on the UCLA 13 to score again. A safety after a blocked punt just a couple of minutes later made it 16-7.

But then UCLA’s big plays started to take their toll. Gaston Green broke away up the right sideline, right in front of the Cougar bench, for a 50-yard gain that led to a score. And on the Bruins’ next series, James Primus scored on a 36-yard run.

Very bad signs, the Cougar coach knew.

“I was starting to see the effects of the heat, then,” Walden said. “All year we’ve been able to stop the big play, but on Green’s big play, I thought it was a case of a letdown. You kept thinking someone would get over there, but no one did. Maybe we thought he’d been out of bounds. But when Primus had that big play, I knew we were in trouble . . .

“We were not in good sync, but then you have to ask the question--was that because we weren’t playing well or because of the tenacity of UCLA. I thought UCLA had a good game plan and played well. I never felt like we had control on either side of the ball, not even when we were up, 16-7. We never did get into a real good tempo.

“In the second half, it was one-dimensional football. Their offense was on the field about 26 minutes and our defense was out there too damned long.”

As for why Green was able to get so much yardage out of his sweep when the defense surely knew it was coming, Walden said, “When they knock you down and when the guy with the ball runs real fast, that’s going to happen . . .

“They beat us up while they were beating us. It was intense. Physical. I believe we’re going to pay hard for this game when we find out how some of our players are.”

But Walden made it clear that he was not complaining about that, or about the score.

“Terry (Donahue) is not responsible for my athletes,” Walden said. “This was not an intramural game.”

Asked how he thought his players were taking the loss, Walden said, “Did you see any of them dancing?”

Ricky Reynolds, a senior cornerback from Sacramento, was one of the Cougar players not dancing his way from the locker room to the bus. He agreed with everything his coach had said about the strength of the Bruins, the heat, the momentum.

And he admitted that being on the field so long takes its toll--especially when the game gets so one-sided.

Reynolds said, “That kind of a score weighs heavily on you. It makes it much harder. The heat was getting to us, too.

“This is hard to take, but I don’t think it’s going to set us back too much. We came in with good confidence, and we know we can play better than this. This was just one of those games that got away from us.

“I think we’ll be able to get our heads straight and go on from here.”