Retrospection Evaluation–Wazzu

Posted by: Avinash on Thursday, January 31st, 2008

calwazzu

I’m trying to think of why I have the Cougars ranked ahead of the Wildcats in terms of status and final standings. At least Arizona put up a fight in their losses–Bill Doba just got asskicked at every juncture. This is probably why he’s gone and Mike Stoops is still here.

And it doesn’t get that much better next year with Brink leaving. Wazzu could easily be hitting the bottom next year. Oh well, at least their basketball team will make March noise.

The wins: Only the Apple Cup was any sort of close. Put 45 on San Diego State and Idaho alike; these teams finished a combined 5-19. Shut down UCLA in Pullman a week after they knocked off Cal *pounding head into wall*; stomped up Stanford and beat down

The losses: This Wazzu team despised the idea of tension. Other than their close loss to a sleepwalking Cal team and a near upset of ASU, this team got manhandled, obliterated, annihilated in defeat. Hung around with an overrated Badger team that eventually beat them by 21. USC pounded them by 33. Arizona smacked up 48 on them. The Oregon schools beat them by a combined 81 points. This team gave up 40 points or more on five occasions. To say that this defensive-minded team had “problems” is an understatement.

The bright spots: When you think about the top two QB-receiver combos in the Pac-10, you probably think Longshore-Hawkins or Booty-Davis in 2007. Yet, in terms of raw production, our two biggest winners were Tuitama-Thomas in Arizona and then Brink-Gibson in Washington State. Brandon Gibson had great numbers all season long, and certainly complemented Brink well. Wazzu was 8th in the country in pass offense, and Brink carried them to many of their victories. Unfortunately for the Cougars, that was pretty much the only thing they could carry.

The weaknesses: You play in a place like Pullman, you get to have fans like this.

[youtube 9F1heWOWuEQ]

Oh, the team? Well, we thought Arizona had a terrifying disparity in run-pass production–Wazzu was even worse. One of the top pass offenses was complemented by one of the worst rushing attacks, 100th overall. Their total defense was near the bottom. As mentioned before, Wazzu gave up points in bundles. Their special teams were terrible (10th in kick returns, 8th in punt returns in conference).

Draft prospects: Uh. Brink is not an NFL quarterback. I watched him for sixty minutes against the Cal defense, and he could muster approximately no offense for 59 minutes (167 yards for the first 51 minutes, 160 for the last nine). I’ll go to what the Cougar boards had for their picks: Michael Bumpus the wide receiver, Jed Collins the tight end, Ropati Pitoitua the defensive tackle. Pretty weak class–another of the deficiencies for which Doba probably got canned (even Stoops had Cason).

What our performance against them showed us: By this point, Cal was sleepwalking through games, one-by-one (USC provided the last flicker of fight). We scored 20 points in a game we should have spotted 35. One of our best first halves of the season ended in an underachieving score of 10-0. With 3 minutes left the score was 13-9. Underwhelming is the right word. If not for Forsett, Hawkins, Follett and DeCoud, we probably lose this one and don’t go to a bowl at all. Win five, lose seven. Now THAT would have been untold misery.



Topics: Analysis, Cal Football, College Football

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