Washington State vs. Arizona: Q & A with CougCenter

To get the inside scoop on Wazzu, we talked to CougCenter's Jeff Nusser and asked how he's feeling about this week's game.

Every week, we talk to someone who covers our upcoming opponent to pick their brain about the week's game. This week, we talked to Jeff Nusser from CougCenter to find out how the Washington State Cougars have improved as the year went on and who to look out for on both sides of the ball.

1. Washington State has been all over the map this season, losing at home to Portland State before beating Oregon and nearly beating Cal. How do you expect Washington State to play the rest of the season?

Jeff Nusser: When I think "all over the map," I typically think of a team with erratic performances. WSU hasn't really been that; the Cougars started the season with that turd of a performance against Portland State, but they've been steadily improving ever since. It hasn't been perfectly linear, but it's been about as close to that as you'll generally see in college football.

They handled their other two non-conference opponents -- Rutgers down to the wire, Wyoming pretty easily -- before losing a close game to Cal in which there were lots of positive signs, but still too many self-inflicted wounds. Those were cleaned up to a large degree the next week in an overtime win over Oregon, and then they blasted OSU right out of the game last week.

To that end, I don't think there's any reason to think this team won't keep improving. The Cougs are young and they appear hungrier than last year's team that fell apart and finished with just three wins. The offense is gaining more confidence as Luke Falk gets more experience, and the defense is rapidly improving under a first year coordinator. I hope that means the best is yet to come.

2. Unsurprisingly, Washington State leads the Pac-12 in passing offense behind Luke Falk. How has Falk progressed and improved since last season?

Jeff Nusser: From the very beginning, he showed tremendous poise and a better-than-expected command of the offense -- it's what allowed him to pass 4-star recruit Tyler Bruggman for the backup job before last season, leading to Bruggman's transfer. One thing he struggled with early on was holding onto the ball too long, but that's improved in recent weeks, and you can see the production of the offense improving because of it. The next step for him -- which sort of goes hand in hand with the previous thing -- is finding his outlets more quickly when the play is obviously not going to develop downfield. But all told, he's been pretty incredibly for a redshirt sophomore who has as much put on his plate as an Air Raid quarterback does.

3. From an outsider’s perspective, the Washington State defense is a major unknown. What players should Arizona fans keep an eye on from the Washington State defense?

Jeff Nusser: And from an insider's perspective, we're still not exactly sure what we've got. Five of the Cougs' six opponents have been pretty one-dimensional; only Cal has really tested them in both throwing and running. And in that respect, they did pretty well. I'd expect Arizona to run it quite a bit at these guys, as that's been an ongoing issue that started against Portland State, which means the defensive linemen -- particularly nose tackle Daniel Ekuale and defensive tackle Destiny Vaeao -- will be front and center. When they're controlling the line, it frees up linebackers Jeremiah Allison and Peyton Pelluer to do what they do best: Create havoc. They're the No. 4 linebacker unit in the country in Bill Connelly's havoc percentage.

Also watch out for safety Shalom Luani. He's a junior college transfer who was named the Pac-12 defensive player of the week after picking off OSU twice, including one to the house. He's fast, he's always around the ball and he hits like a ton of bricks. He'll be tested this weekend in a way he's never been, though -- it's going to be interesting to see if he has the discipline to stay assignment sound against the pass while also coming down to aggressively support the run.

4. What is Washington State’s biggest advantage in this game? What is its biggest disadvantage?

Jeff Nusser: The biggest advantage has to be its passing attack against Arizona's inexperienced secondary. WSU tends to feast on those kinds of situations, and this offense is really rolling at the moment. The disadvantage is probably the run defense referenced earlier. It has been OK at times, but the Cougs have also been shoved around pretty good at times, particularly when teams mix in an element of misdirection in their rushing attack. Arizona obviously has an excellent run game, so WSU is going to having to overachieve a little bit to slow down the Wildcats.

5. What is your prediction for this game?

Jeff Nusser: I really see it as a coin flip. About the only thing I'm sure of is that unless there is some major sloppiness, the game will be high scoring. Let's go with 45-42 WSU.

Thanks to Jeff Nusser for stopping by and answering our questions! You can find him on Twitter @NussCoug, and for more coverage of this week's game from the Wazzu side of the ball, check out CougCenter!

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