Hump Day With Huddy – Stanford Week

It’s Wednesday, friends. As such, I’m here for another round of writing about whatever pops in my head that may or may not pertain to WSU football, in no particular order. I’ve got to work on my intro. Please click on the jump anyway…

It’s time to move on. Washington State lost to UCLA on Saturday. We didn’t score enough in the red zone and couldn’t stop the Bruins when it mattered. We played well and could/should be 4-1. There is literally nothing more to say about it at this point. I hope the players aren’t dwelling on what might have been have been and are focusing only on Stanford. If not, the Cardinal will come in and smack them in the mouth.

Stanford may come in and smack them in the mouth regardless.My prediction will be up tomorrow, but I don’t feel good about this. The hype machine (and the fact that it’s largely true) has me sufficiently frightened of Andrew Luck. In other news, he has a whole crapload of really good teammates. I’m scared.

That section turned out to be a little bit of a bummer so let’s crank out some uplifting things real quick, complete with exclamation points: It’s pumpkin ice cream season! It’s pumpkin beer season! I watched “Horrible Bosses” last night and it was funny! We might see the debut of the gray jerseys this week! (Did everyone vote? What’d you pick?) Ryan Leaf will be in Pullman signing his book this weekend! The Red Rifle Andy Dalton has my Bengals at 3-2! OK, I feel better now.

Jordan Wynn is out for the year.Possibly lost in the news of Mike Stoops getting fired, another little nugget came out in the Pac 12 this week. This one might have a more direct impact on our Little Team That Could. Utah has already struggled in its first season in the BCS and now they’re having to turn to Jon Hays, a guy that came to Utah last minute after his initial team, mighty Nebraska-Omaha, dropped their football program. Does this mean that the Cougs will definitely beat Utah now? Well, no, but it does push that game more toward the winnable range than what I had thought initially. This leads me to my next point…

Still feeling like going bowling.After the Stanford game, we’ll have reached the midpoint of the season (already!) Let’s assume for the sake of this argument that we’ll come out of that game 3-3. It’s not a spectacular record, but it’s exactly where I thought we’d be in the pre-season when I projected this season would end in a bowl. As pissed off as we all were on Saturday (crap, I said we should move on), it was by no means a death blow to this season. Take out Oregon, Stanford and maybe Arizona State and every game left is a toss-up in my opinion. That leaves four games in which the Cougs will have to find a way to go 3-1. Is it possible?

Chris Fowler tweeted this morning that Gameday really would have been in Pullman on Saturday had we not lost to UCLA. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE!!!

Oh yeah, Lobster will start again.Today is X-Ray day for Jeff Tuel so he may be cleared, but Coach Wulff has already gone on record saying Marshall Lobbestael will get the start against Stanford. Maybe Tuel will get a series or two on Saturday, but the prevailing theory out of Pullman is that he’s not “ready”. It’s a bummer for him because the kid has got to be dying to get back out there, but for this week it’s probably OK.

For all you gamblers out there, we are roughly three touchdown underdogs this week. To once again close with a countdown of things about which you may or may not care, here’s a list of my top 5 favorite underdogs:

1. Rudy
2. The Cleveland Indians from “Major League”
3. The Mighty Ducks
4. Jim Valvano’s national championship team at NC State
5. Underdog

That’s all for this week. Go Cougs!