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2008 Washington State Cougars football team

2008 Washington State Cougars football
Washington State COUGARS logo.gif
Conference Pacific-10 Conference
2008 record 2–11 (1–8 Pac-10)
Head coach Paul Wulff
Home stadium Martin Stadium
(Capacity: 35,117)
Seasons
« 2007 2009 »
2008 Pacific-10 football standings
Conf     Overall
Team   W   L         W   L  
#3 USC $   8 1         12 1  
#10 Oregon   7 2         10 3  
#19 Oregon State   7 2         9 4  
California   6 3         9 4  
Arizona   5 4         8 5  
Arizona State   4 5         5 7  
Stanford   4 5         5 7  
UCLA   3 6         4 8  
Washington State   1 8         2 11  
Washington   0 9         0 12  
  • $ – Conference champion
Rankings from AP Poll

The 2008 Washington State Cougars football team represented Washington State University in the 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team's head coach was Paul Wulff. It played its home games at Martin Stadium in Pullman, Washington. The season was a disaster from the start for WSU, and they gave up the most points in a single season in Pac-10 Conference history, allow more than 60 points on four occasions.

Perhaps the only consolation for the Cougars was winning the Apple Cup. The media joked before the game that it was the "Crapple Cup" and "full of worms", because the Huskies (0–10 at the time) also had a very poor season.

Oklahoma State Cowboys spoiled new Cougars coach Paul Wulff's debut. Cowboys' Kendall Hunter had a career-best two touchdowns, quarterback Zac Robinson passed for 182 yards and ran for another score. The Cougars' new offense didn't look good against the Cowboys.

The Cowboys had 367 total yards (193 yards passing, 174 rushing) while Washington State had 196 total yards (82 passing and 114 yards rushing)

The Cougars were shut out after the first period while the Golden Bears scored at least 10 points each quarter to win the Pac-10 conference opener at Martin Stadium, Washington State's home field. Cal had over 500 yards (112 yards passing and 392 yards on the ground) and allowed only 162 yards (106 yards passing, 56 yards rushing) to the Cougars.

Mark Sanchez became the first USC quarterback to throw five touchdown passes in a half as the Trojans dominated.

USC's defense, ranked first in the nation coming in by allowing just 9.4 points per game, held the Cougars scoreless for the first time since 1984, ending a stretch of 280 straight games in which the Cougars had not been shut out. That was the nation's second-longest active streak behind Michigan's 306. For Washington State, it is also the largest shutout loss and largest margin of defeat in school history.

"Our guys had a ball playing football today, from the locker room on out", USC coach Pete Carroll said. "Right from the start, we wanted to find that focus that we really hadn't had yet."

It was the largest shutout victory for USC (5-1, 3-1 Pac-10) since a 69-0 win over Montana in 1931.


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Wikipedia

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