Dream is shattered by prosaic reality

LOS ANGELES — With hopeful trepidation, Washington State's small contingent of fans here Saturday dared dream of an upset, ignoring good sense and all the guys who run 4.4 on the USC sideline.

Look at Appalachian State, they figured. How about Syracuse waylaying Louisville, and Ball State nearly upending Nebraska and Mississippi bothering Florida?

There was more. It was in Southern California that the Cougars of 1988 pulled off the program's only shocker over a No. 1 team (UCLA). There was the Sports Illustrated jinx, poised to bedevil the Trojans, whose running game at Nebraska was splashed on the cover this week.

There was even rain here for a couple of days, and wasn't it rain in Corvallis 40 years ago that reduced O.J. Simpson to fighting through quicksand and the top-rated Trojans to 3-0 upset losers in one of the conference's most notable surprises?

Alas, these Trojans are more about strength and speed than omens and premonitions. They seemed bent on rectifying whatever small frailties they displayed at Nebraska, and throttled WSU, 47-14.

They threw 38 times and completed 30. They poked and prodded and didn't have a scrimmage play longer than 25 yards. But they had 28 first downs.

"I thought J.D. did a nice job of distributing the ball to the uncovered guys," said USC offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian of quarterback John David Booty. "They were giving us a lot of bubble screens and hitches. The opportunities were there, so J.D. kept taking them."

So, at long last, almost two months after the Cougars convened for fall camp, their season can begin next weekend at Arizona. That's when the real reckoning starts.

Maybe as much as anybody in Division IA football, WSU has spent September fulfilling outside expectations, not lifting the veil to its inner soul. The Cougars have lost where they should have lost, at Wisconsin and here at the Coliseum, and they won where they should have won, against San Diego State and Idaho.

Thus, no surprises, no heavy intrigue, no bold statements that they're a program about to emerge or one headed for the dumper. Mostly, it's to be played out the last eight games of the season.

Oh, there have been subplots. At times — early against Wisconsin, early against USC — the WSU offense has looked capable of finessing anybody in the country. At other times, such as when the Cougars lurched for 7 yards in the second quarter against the Trojans, they can look like practice just started Wednesday.

"We were OK with giving up that 10-, 12-yard route," said USC safety Taylor Mays, a sophomore from Seattle's O'Dea High School. "As long as it wasn't that 40-yard route."

Defensively, WSU has been leaky enough to justify the most dire forecasts. Against USC, the Cougars pretty much kept everything in front of them, didn't allow big plays downfield, but neither were they able to stay USC from scoring on five of its six first-half possessions.

Muddying those WSU variables is this reality: It's not usually a good sign when you have to switch punters in the second quarter.

The Cougars continue to showcase a cornucopia of kicking-game foibles. Well, not foibles like the onside kick coach Bill Doba ordered to begin the game against the Trojans in 2004 — it went 2 yards — but odd nonetheless.

After USC had taken a 14-7 lead near the end of the opening quarter, the Trojans kicked off to WSU wideout Charles Dillon. After a ball of humanity had dispersed at about the 15-yard line, Dillon found himself with a huge expanse of green ahead, spoiled only by USC kicker David Buehler.

Dillon appeared to have the angle — and you presumed, the wheels — to run deep into Trojans' territory, if not for a touchdown to tie it.

Somehow, Buehler closed and ran Dillon out of bounds at the USC 46. Said Mays, "A lot of people don't know this, but [Buehler] is a 4.4 guy with almost a 400-pound bench press. He's a good athlete."

The Cougars didn't get a score out of that. And they already trailed 17-7 midway through the second quarter when punter Darryl Blunt muffed a good snap and USC took over at the WSU 20, three plays away from a touchdown.

If you're scoring at home, that's three big punt misplays in the past five games — this one preceded by a killer block for a touchdown in the 2006 Apple Cup and a block by Wisconsin.

Of course, in the first quarter, WSU had a kickoff to the 14, returned by Desmond Reed to the Cougars' 42. But that kind of folly only qualifies as garden-variety for a special-teams-challenged team, not industrial-strength.

So the Cougars soldier on, still more cipher than certainty. Next weekend at Arizona, the veil starts coming off.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com