⚡ CFB Dashboard

IN ORDER FOR the Washington State football team to get return to national prominence, vying for the College Football Playoff and top-25 rankings, they simply must win games like Saturday night. How many times was it said last season with a new coach and new roster that the Cougs played hard, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion. Those road games versus Ole Miss, Virginia and James Madison were there for the taking. In a similar way, so too was the 34-24 loss Arizona gave the Cougs in the first night game at Martin Stadium. The game was in their hand to come away with win, despite another new coach and another new roster. Can you fault the effort? No. You can however fault the execution, the turnovers and the mental mistakes. Effort can only get a team so far and while that's what the Palouse hangs its hat on, winning is so much more fun. Now with a 1-3 record next to them, the Cougars still can achieve whatever they want to with conference play beginning next week. The execution must match the effort moving forward. There was plenty of reaction after Saturday's setback to another Big 12 program. Scribes, coaches, players and Twitter regulars expressed their thoughts afterwards. "It all starts with preparation. It was 100% communication, and you see it pre-snap. The communication was there. We're talking, and that's just the play to make. I gotta be there." — Jackquintin Bal, Cougar safety on his pick-six "Lost but thought we played a good game. Encouraged about our chances to win this Pac-12." — Jim Moore, radio icon "Love my Cougs!! Hell of an effort tonight from the team. We play hard. I thought everything around was much improved. Pac-12 season games start next weekend. Everything is still on the line including the conference championship. The rough part of playing three top-level P4 teams is it can kill moral early. Stay mentally strong. Still a lot to play for. Perseverance." — Zac Young, diehard Wazzu fan on Twitter "Would have loved to get the win against Arizona since most of my coworkers are 'fans.' Monday might be tough, but I'll handle it. There were definitely improvements, but also some big misses that we need to work on. The energy was electric. Crimson lights confirm I love a night game. Scoreboard now only showing the score on the ticker tape. Always and forever Go Cougs." — Lauren Thomas, WSU fan on Twitter "Plain and simple, the Cougars cannot win and cannot succeed offensively unless they consistently move the chains. In order to do accomplish the area in which they've had several shortcomings, going stagnant and looking lost on the early downs is not the answer." — Jamey Vinnick, Cougfan.com "Things turned sideways after Bal's pick-six in the secondary. Whether it was miscommunication or missed assignments or soft coverage or even missed tackles, the Cougars didn't have an answer for the passing attack of Arizona. Its quarterback Noah Fifita had time in the second half that he didn't in the first, and found wide open receivers on deep passes, completing four tosses of 15-plus yards." — Zach Martin, Cougfan.com "I appreciate our players' fight. Started fast with the touchdown and the interception. Had other opportunities there within the first half. Second half, give Arizona credit. Third quarter, really inefficient on offense. I think we had four drives, three punts, and a turnover. Our defense battled." — Kirby Moore "WSU Cougars played an all-around much better game. Keep working on offense." — Bob Stout on Twitter "A problem that is turning into a pattern for the Cougars is stellar defensive play that wears down over the course of the game. In addition to the first quarter interception, the Cougars sacked Fifita on each of Arizona's first two drives. The defensive linemen's long arms were up and active in passing lanes and creating chaos for the diminutive Arizona quarterback." — Jacob Thorpe, The Spokesman-Review "It may be Pinnick's first season of FBS ball, but he has been too slow to recognize a good decision from a bad one, especially when he's looking to stretch the field vertically." — Greg Woods, The Spokesman-Review, on WSU's QB1 "The sequence of deflating, to say the least. For starters, Pinnick could have done anything else but slide and pick up the first down by a yard or two. It turned out to be an unforced error that halted the Cougars' drive." — Todd Milles, Sports Illustrated "It's a good win. Winning is hard, and credit to Washington State. They played tough football. They made plays, and I loved our response. Right? We go down 14-0 in the first quarter, and players just kept responding, kept finding ways to make plays, get a stop. Then coming out of halftime, one of the biggest things we talked about was, we talked about multiple battles in this game that we were going to have to fight. And coming up here, we know this is a tough trip. We know it's a tough place to play. Lots of us have played in games here, coached in games here. We knew the crowd would be in it, would be impactful. And so we talked about just the battle of discipline." — Brant Brennan, Arizona head coach "The offense did some good things early, but multiple drives fizzled out because of a bad decision, an early slide, a penalty and so on. Maybe it will help to play an even level of competition. But the offense that has showed up for the better part of four quarters has been far too inconsistent to rely on." — Jamey Vinnick, Cougfan.com "We have to make sure we have a plan. That everyone's on the same page going from the half to the third quarter, especially in a tight game like that where our defense is battling, and we have to find more ways to create explosive plays. We had them in the first quarter and in the first half, and had opportunities there to score even more, and then in the second half we didn't. So we have to look at the film and see where we went wrong." — Kirby Moore "Arizona clawed its way back into the game with a career-best performance by wide receiver Tre Spivey, who scored two touchdowns in the first half. Spivey had a career-high 129 yards on seven catches for two touchdowns, with most of his production in the first half." — Justin Spears, The Arizona Republic "Find me a bigger fraud than a Jedd Fisch-coached team with expectations... spoiler alert, you can't." — Zach Martin, Cougfan.com Washington State players celebrate during Saturday's game against Arizona. (Photo: Whittney Thornton/Cougfan.com)