Washington State Football: 9/17 presser, Leach focused on USC
Washington State football head coach Mike Leach held his weekly press conference on Monday. He is focused on Friday night’s opponent USC.
Washington State football has been off to a high-flying, rip-roaring start to this 2018 campaign. They haven’t played any big name opponents but they have taken care of business and then some against Wyoming (41-19), San Jose St. (31-0), and Eastern Washington (59-24). They can go into this week against USC boasting a 3-0 record which is more than a team like UCLA can say with their two bad losses to Cincinnati and Fresno State.
From the coach’s mouth
This week, the men from Pullman will travel to Southern California to take on a Trojan team, who has so far had a tough schedule, losing to both Stanford and Texas. That said, the Cougars have only beaten USC 10 times in their history.
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Mike Leach was the WSU coach for two of those victories. “USC is a good team and all we can do is play the best we can,” Leach said.
The resiliency of the Cougars has been apparent. They have outscored teams 52-0 in the fourth quarter. For a team that has the term “Couging it” stuck on them, that is a pretty impressive number early in the season. “I think the sides of the ball have complimented each other pretty well and we haven’t had those long lapses on either side because one side will take up the slack,” Leach said. “If we play together, then we are really strong.”
When asked about how the team has played, Leach said, “Our entire squad has played well in the fourth quarter. In Wyoming, we kind of evolved as a team and just got better as we got more reps in.”
The Cougars go into this game against USC with a different feeling compared to most appearances versus the Trojans. They are hot and are playing with no lack of confidence. “We haven’t spent a lot of time getting distracted waiting for somebody else to play or waiting for the other side of the ball to do something,” Leach said.
Next. 3 Takeaways from Cougars win over EWU. dark
It will be interesting as Cougar fans to watch what happens this weekend in an unusual Friday night game. The Cougars will get their first test to see how well they stack up in the PAC-12 Conference. One thing we know is that Leach will have them prepared to take on the challenge.