Cougs, Vandals and all that talk

The last time Idaho and Washington State played in football was in 2013, with the Cougars winning 42-0 in Pullman.

The end of the game got a little testy, with words exchanged between Idaho’s Paul Petrino and WSU’s Mike Leach during the postgame handshake.

As the story goes, Idaho was trying to avoid a shutout in the final minutes, and WSU, which hadn’t blanked anyone since 2003, put some of its starters back in the game at the end.

Idaho (1-1) and WSU (0-2) meet for the first time since then on Saturday morning in Pullman.

Earlier this week, Petrino downplayed the incident.

“I think it was buried after the minute it happened,” he said. “I think it was two competitive guys that both wanted to win, and that was a long time ago and we’ll just move on and get ready to play this game.”

In 2013, Mike Breske was the WSU defensive coordinator. The following year, he was fired during the season by Cougars coach Mike Leach. This year, he’s Idaho’s defensive coordinator.

Asked earlier this week about what led to Breske’s firing, Leach said. “I didn’t feel like our entire staff was fully invested, so I felt like I needed to make a change. So we did, and we’re happy about it.”

Leach goes off on his team: WSU came into this season expecting to go to its third bowl in four seasons. It still could happen, but losses to Eastern Washington and Boise State to begin the season have lessened the margin for error.

Leach challenged the toughness of his team, saying his coaches need to be tougher on the players.

“There’s going to be a price to pay,” Leach said.

In last week’s loss at Boise, “Our inside receivers were afraid of No. 20 (Tanner Vallejo),” Leach said. He said anybody other than receiver John Thompson “got their asses kicked.”

Some other snippets:

“Right now, we’ve got the atmosphere of a JC softball game. That’s what we are; a JC softball team. It’s not whether you win or lose; the team that wins is the one that has the most fun.”

“If you want to be nice to them, and all this Kumbaya crap, it doesn’t work.”

“I’ve got receivers running routes that don’t resemble anything we teach. We don’t tuck the ball and go straight upfield, we do all these stupid moves. We run out of bounds more than any team in the country. We’re the easiest team in the country to tackle. We don’t like to run and hit, and this is a game for running and hitting.”

“Their lives are going to change as they know it.”

He threatened lineup changes and more post-practice drills, among other things.

“I just think we have a very immature team, and we don’t handle success well,” said Leach, whose team capped a 9-4 season last year with a Sun Bowl victory. “That whole feel-good thing’s got to be purged, because our team does not have the ability to play hard when there’s any level of comfort.”

The next day, Leach was asked whether linebacker Logan Tago, who was arrested Monday on charges of second-degree assault and second-degree robbery following an incident in June, would be able to play against Idaho.

“Anything we do will be handled internally,” Leach said. “Everybody’s innocent until proven guilty, and I don’t need the media’s help on all of this.”