{"id":23271,"date":"2015-09-23T08:13:45","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T15:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/wash-state-searches-for-consistency\/"},"modified":"2015-09-23T08:13:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T15:13:45","slug":"wash-state-searches-for-consistency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/wash-state-searches-for-consistency\/","title":{"rendered":"Wash. State searches for consistency"},"content":{"rendered":"

SPOKANE, Wash. \u2014<\/strong> Washington State is about where many fans expected it to be after completing its non-conference schedule, at 2-1 and clearly needing to do some work.<\/p>\n

So the Cougars head into this season\u2019s only bye this week looking for some consistency with Pac-12 play on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of work to do, there\u2019s no question,\u201d coach Mike Leach said. \u201cI think the biggest thing is we\u2019ve got to become more cohesive on all sides of the ball. Not so much on an individual level but playing together.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Leach\u2019s perspective, there are too many players waiting for someone else to step up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain amount of indecisiveness that exists as far as a guy wanting the play to come to them, sorting out whether the other guy is going to make the play or them,\u201d Leach said. \u201cWe have to have a little more reckless abandon with regard to our making the plays ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington State opened the season with a deflating loss to lower-division Portland State. The Cougars rebounded to win a thriller at Rutgers and then beat Wyoming last weekend, their first win in Pullman in over a year. They open Pac-12 play at California (3-0) on Oct. 3.<\/p>\n

Linebacker Peyton Pelluer said the team is \u201cdefinitely going to use this bye to get into conference play 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

One goal this week is to find a way to avoid playing at the level of the opponent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s more a mindset,\u201d said linebacker Jeremiah Allison. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any room to relax. I think we just ease off the gas pedal sometime.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a bad idea, even against an FCS team like Portland State. The Vikings beat Washington State 24-17.<\/p>\n

Players said afterward that they might have taken their opponent too lightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought we\u2019d just go out and make plays because we had a good summer,\u201d quarterback Luke Falk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need to focus on playing a faceless opponent each week,\u201d said Pelluer, who had 14 tackles, including 3\u00bd for loss, against Wyoming. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t matter about them. We need to focus on what we can do and doing our jobs to the best of our abilities and putting together four quarters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Falk agreed the Cougars need to put together a complete game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if we can just rise up and play together, we can be a deadly team, and I think that\u2019s going to be something to focus on this week,\u201d Falk said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPOKANE, Wash. \u2014 Washington State is about where many fans expected it to be after completing its non-conference schedule, at 2-1 and clearly needing to do some work. So the Cougars head into this season\u2019s only bye this week looking for some consistency with Pac-12 play on the horizon. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23271"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}