Leach empathizes with new Oregon State coach
Washington State coach Mike Leach indicated that although the Cougars are coming off an impressive win at home against Utah after taking USC to the limit in Los Angeles, playing at struggling Oregon State will not be a breather for them.
Oregon State is 1-4 overall and 0-2 in the Pac-12 in Jonathan Smith’s first season as coach at his alma mater. The Beavers were 7-29 in the three seasons before Smith’s arrival.
Trying to build a successful program in the remote town of Pullman, Wash., Leach can empathize with Smith, who is trying to restore winning football in Corvallis, Ore.
“If he thinks it is tough there, he should have tried it at Washington State in our first year,” said Leach, who took over in 2012 after the Cougars were 9-40 the previous five seasons.
“You’ve just got to keep trying to get better, which they are. They are getting better in every phase when I watch them play.”
Leach went on to say that he had to dig the Cougars out of a “bigger hole” than what Smith is faced with at Oregon State. The Beavers had a nine-win season under Mike Riley in Leach’s first year with Washington State in 2012.
“They weren’t quite in the hole Washington State was,” Leach said. “We were in a little bigger hole when we started here. You try to create an identity for your team. I think they are starting to develop that and they are getting tougher and tougher.”
Oregon State is coming in off consecutive sizable losses to the Arizona schools — 35-14 to Arizona and 52-24 at Arizona State.
One positive from last weekend’s game against the Sun Devils — freshman running back Jermar Jefferson rushed for 254 yards and two touchdowns.
Smith spent the previous four seasons as offensive coordinator and quarterback coach at Washington, the Cougars’ archrival.
Washington State is favored by 15 points against Beavers, but Leach is not paying attention to the discrepancy between the programs.
“We’ve got to get better this week,” Leach said. “We got a long ways to go. We’ve got to get a lot better this week, and we don’t have a ton of time to do it.”
