Oregon Decisively Dominates WSU 52-6

The opening kickoff by Washington State was taken up the right side by Oregon redshirt freshman Kenjon Barner, who appeared to fumble the ball after being hit by Cougar redshirt freshman Joshua Garrett.

It was an omen.

The play was reviewed by officials; Barner was ruled down before fumbling.

Ducks don't lose the ball.

Ducks don't lose the game and trounce WSU by a final score of 52-6.

Junior Jeremiah Masoli led his team on a well executed eight-play, 58-yard drive that took just 2:08 to put their first touchdown up on the scoreboard.

Before the game would conclude, Ducks would soar across the imaginary line establishing the end zone six more times.

After the game, the Cougs were left to imagine what it would be like for their offense to score multiple touchdowns.

The Oregon opening drive looked easy. For that matter, everything looked easy for Coach Chip Kelly and the Ducks Saturday night in front of another sold out crowd.

Coming out of the tunnel and starting fast continues to be something the Cougs just can’t pull off in 2009. Even for a very young football team, WSU has failed the lesson of how to begin a game.

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“Early on we had a couple of chances to have some momentum go in our favor, and it didn’t work out that way,” said Coach Paul Wulff after the game.

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Coach Paul Wulff could only watch as his young team expended a lot of energy with little positive result.

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“The players got to a point where they were very disappointed. The defense (was) worn down and that’s just the way it was. Offensively, there was a struggle, and we just couldn’t get things going. We didn’t play as well as we’d like.”

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A number of young WSU players took their first foot forward onto a Pac-10 football field. The Cougar football team took a step backward.

True freshman Jeff Tuel made his first college start tonight. He was only in the game long enough to attempt two passes, completing one for just three yards. Tuel had to leave the game after taking a helmet in his back and suffering a hip pointer.

Another true freshman, Carl Winston, shed his redshirt to take his first college football handoffs. Winston carried the ball six times for just 13 yards. He also returned three kickoffs for an average of 19 yards. It’s a start.

Add Alex Reitnouer to the list of true freshman tossing their redshirt off to help teammates now instead of waiting until next season. Reitnouer started the game at left tackle next to redshirt freshman Tyson Pencer, who was inserted into the starting lineup at left guard.

With the Oregon defense completely shutting down the Cougar offense, WSU went to an "I" formation with a traditional fullback. That’s right. Coach Wulff was looking for some kind of answer to deter the swarming Duck defenders. Naturally, if the Cougs were to shift out of character by running out of the "I," they had to follow form and insert yet another true freshman at fullback. Jared Byers from Pullman HS threw some blocks at the guys wearing lemon yellow jerseys, sporting a pair of wings over their shoulder pads.

Make no mistake in assessing the game in Eugene.

Coach Kelly has his team playing as good as any college football team in the nation. The Ducks made the Cal Bears look like a junior varsity team last week. Saturday night, they exposed the Cougs as a team young enough to be labeled junior varsity.

Oregon is going to be tough to beat the rest of this season if they stay healthy.

Washington State might recover and take a step forward next weekend if they get a few of their players healthy enough to return to action.

It won’t show on the stat sheet. It sure didn’t show up on the scoreboard. The one lesson this team has learned from Coach Wulff is to play hard for 60 minutes.

Without the effort being dedicated by WSU players, even when on the losing end of a lopsided score, the team won’t get back to playing 60 minutes of football to win a game.

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“You got to give Oregon credit. They came out and got on top of us really early, and right now we don’t have enough team confidence yet to overcome big, big deficits like this. It’s part of our growth. We have to keep growing through these tough times. Keep learning from them and find ways to get better off these types of games.” —WSU Coach Paul Wulff

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Washington State was taking steps forward and improving going into the Oregon game Saturday night.

Absorbing a good old fashioned spanking, 52-6, the Cougs took a step backward.

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“There’s certain teams we matchup with better than others right now based on our personnel. We’ve just got to continue to work hard. I like our matchup against Arizona State. We’ve got to come out and we’ve got to respond. Lick our wounds and come back and have a good week of practice and get a win at Homecoming.”

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Washington State had three different players leave the Oregon game with hip pointers. Jeff Tuel, Gino Simone, and Bernard Wolfgramm all sustained the same injury. All three finished the game watching from the sideline.

Tuel spoke on the post game show with Bud Nameck on the Cougar Sports Radio Network indicating that he'd be ready to go next week against ASU.

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Postgame Notes

- With Carl Winston (running back), Alex Reitnouer (offensive guard) and Jared Byers (fullback) all seeing action today, the Cougars have now played six true freshman in 2009…WSU played nine true freshman during the 2005 season.

- In addition to Tuel, Reitnouer also received the first start of his career in his first collegiate game today against the Ducks…WSU has now had 16 players make their Cougar starting debuts in 2009, six on offense and 10 on defense…WSU had 24 first-time starters in 2008.

- Redshirt senior running back Dwight Tardy became only the ninth running back in WSU history to eclipse 2,000 career rushing yards with his 23 yards today against the Ducks…Tardy now has 2,008 on his career, and ranks ninth on WSU’s career rushing list.

- Redshirt freshman cornerback Terrance Hayward recorded a career-high nine tackles…his eight first-quarter tackles were more than he had entering today’s game (three).

- Redshirt junior punter Reid Forrest, the nation’s third-ranked punter entering today’s game with an average of 45.3 yards per punt, climbed WSU’s career punting lists with his performance today…Forrest averaged 43.1 yards on his nine punts against the Ducks (388 total yards), moving into eighth on the Cougars’ career punts list with 156, and into seventh on WSU’s career punting yards list with 6,512…Forrest passed Kareem Anderson (1998-99; 154) on the total punts list, and moved past Anderson (1998-99; 6,219) and George Martin (1994-95; 6,375)…Forrest also booted his eighth punt of 50-plus yards this season.