Longball’s WSU Spring Game Recap

The football coaches were at the baseball game with a lot of recruits and their families, as well at least one Coug-to-be in 2010, Mead High’s Aaron Dunn. And wait a second… who’s that?

Hey, it’s Klay Thompson explaining the ins-and-outs of America’s past time to Brock Motum. Of course, as Brock’s fellow Aussie, the Mariners’ own Ryan Rowland-Smith will tell you, they play baseball Down Under too.  The Cougs made good in front of the large home crowd, and on the strength of an eight-run 4th inning explosion, they buried the Beavs 12-4 to guarantee a win in the weekend series. With that, it was time for Spring Football, so Amieable and I made our way to Martin Stadium (after beers and nachos at Valhalla, of course).  Read on for more….

As it turned out, most of the offense we would see on the day happened at the baseball game. On the football field, it was the Cougar defense who dominated. To understand why, lets take a quick look at some key players who didn’t participate today:

Steven Ayers – OL
Andrew Roxas- OL
Wade Jacobsen- OL
Gino Simone – WR
James Montgomery -RB
Louis Bland – LB
Alex Hoffman-Ellis – LB

The defense was missing two big-time starters at linebacker in Bland and Hoffman-Ellis, but with a lot of depth, experience, and talent at that position, they never missed a beat. The offense, on the other hand, was down three starters on the offensive line and one at receiver, arguably the two thinnest positions on the team right now.  And it showed.  While the #1 units never squared off against each other, its fair to say that the #1 defense would have dominated if they had.

It wasn’t all bad for the offense. Tuel was in command all day, making strong throws in blustery winds, using his feet to evade pressure and even getting down field to block (yikes!). He also spread the ball around finding Karstetter, Blackledge, Solomon and Mitz, though no doubt he missed having his buddy Gino Simone out there.  But any talk of a QB battle is nonsense, so don’t worry. The job is Tuel’s, end of story.

Another bright spot on offense was the running game. Logwone Mitz ran hard all day and even flashed some moves in the open field, but the revelation of the Spring on offense continues to be Chantz Staden who had another great day. Mitz and Staden as a duo combined for over 140 yards, 7 yds-per-carry and all three touchdowns scored on the day. Not bad, considering the patchwork line they were running behind.

On defense the most conspicuous of many bright spots was the dominant performance of Brandon Rankin. The 2nd team D-line was no match for Rankin, who had 2 sacks and another tackle-for-loss coming form the defensive tackle position. He simply blew up the line of scrimmage on just about every play. I was also really impressed with the play of the secondary who were right in the hip pocket of the receivers on a lot of plays, including a highlight-reel interception by Aire Justin. And Amieable captured this shot of freshman corner Anthony Carpenter (35) breaking up a Jeff Tuel pass to Daniel Blackledge (2):