Happy Humpday Cougs, as we are already at the mid-point of this nice, short week. Don’t you just love the short week btw? Just one workday in to this thing and we can already see the weekend on the horizon! Love it. And even better in our little universe, the kids are back in school today! Summer’s great and all that and we had a really fun one this year…..but enough already. Get back to school and back to learnin’-n-such!
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get jacked up for the Cougs and the upcoming game on Saturday. I personally loved what I’ve heard out of the team since they laid the proverbial egg at Provo, and I am starting to really believe we’re going to be pleased with what we see on Saturday. Not to take anything away from the EWU Eags, I mean they have some real talent and they are going to be flying around looking to hit people and spoil the home opener and all that. But I am starting to feel pretty good about what lies ahead. So on we go to this morning’s links!
I missed this a day or so ago, but our old friend Howie Stalwick at Cougfan weighed in with a good take on the whole game 1 debacle. Howie has some good observations, but beyond anything else it’s a pretty good “shot sheet” of reasons why what happened, happened. It’s not a bunch of excuse making type things that you might find on your friendly neighborhood blog or message board(!), but I think it’s a good exercise as a sledgehammer-reminder of the realities of last week, so definitely check it out.
Next up, Nick Daschel from Cougfan has a detailed look at EWU. There are some good points here, and the Cougs should respect EWU but not exactly fear them? Anyway, I know every year there are a few FCS teams that do rise up and beat an FBS team. But it is still a FAR more rare occurance than some might have you believe. The media hypes it up when it happens, and it does happen occasionally. Sac State over OSU last year for example is one that comes to mind when you think about the Pac-12. And we remember 2010, when CJ Mizell and Alex Hoffman-Ellis rescued the Cougs late vs. Montana State.
NOTE – Youtube link here of the highlights from that game, couldn’t embed it for some reason.
Anyway, Ian Furness mentioned this yesterday on his radio show on KJR, but he recalled that there were rumors that had WSU lost that game vs Montana State, Elson Floyd was ready to fire Wulff right after that game! But the vast majority of time the FBS team does what it has to do, and that’s bag a W.
Cougcenter’s Brian Floyd took in practice yesterday, and has an excellent write-up here. Floyd sprinkles in his opinions within the news itself, and he does a great job of laying out what he saw on Tuesday. I really liked the part where Floyd comments on how Leach spoke about how good things looked in practice last week, and how far south things went during the game on Saturday. It wasn’t just coach-speak, there seems to be some real substance to what Leach said after the game last week.
Speaking of Cougcenter (actually, “writing” of Cougcenter, since I’m not actually “speaking”??), Jeff Nusser nails it with his take on the QB situation. Is there a QB controversy?? Nah, not yet. Not even close, really. Per Nusser, if you go by Leach’s 10 years in Lubbock, 9 of those years he stuck with the starter from the beginning and it all worked out pretty well. My own personal belief is that we stick with Tuel for at least through the Colorado game, giving him basically a full month of game action as the starter, then if you need to make a change, you DO IT AND DON’T LOOK BACK! But I couldn’t agree more with Nusser here, in that all the haters need to “slow your roll” so to speak, pump the brakes, etc, etc, etc.
Christian Caple’s latest recap from Tuesday is here, and details a position switch for one player (Niu Sale), as well as some injury news here and there (Xavier Cooper, Damante Horton), as well as some video from Leach.
All for now. Enjoy your humpday morning, and as always, GO COUGS!
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