Idaho looks to keep up with WSU
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 4 years, 1 month AGO
Every year that Jason Eck was an assistant football coach at Idaho, the Vandals played Washington State.
WSU won each of the matchups 49-8, 38-26 and 56-10.
But the Palouse schools, located just 9 miles apart, have met just three times since then.
The fourth will be tonight at 6:30 at Gesa Stadium in Pullman, in the season opener for both teams.
It will be the teams’ first meeting since 2016.
“I’m surprised it had been so long,” said Eck,” in his first year as Idaho head coach. “I think it’s a great game; I’d love to play them every other year.”
Idaho’s last win over WSU was 38-34 in 2000 — the Vandals’ second win over the Cougars in as many years.
But WSU has won the last nine meetings since then — and only a couple of them have been remotely close.
“The biggest thing we’re going to focus on — I want to see us improving, playing good football,” Eck said. “When you play an FBS team, specifically a Power-5 team, you can play really well and still lose the game, just because they have more scholarships and resources. We’re more concerned with how we play; we can’t control how the Cougars play. We want to play good, clean football; we don’t want to beat ourselves.”
While WSU’s starting quarterback, Cameron Ward, has been advertised as such almost from the day he transferred from Incarnate Word, Idaho’s starting quarterback for tonight is still a mystery — at least outside of the team.
It could be J’Bore Gibbs, who played at South Dakota State when Eck was an assistant there. Or it could be CJ Jordan or Gevani McCoy, who played some for the Vandals last year. Or maybe even Jack Layne, a true freshman.
Eck wasn’t telling.
“We have settled in on what we’re doing,” he said earlier in the week. “We want to leave some suspense. We have a pretty good plan on what we’re doing. We feel pretty confident in all four of those guys.”
Eck said Vandals will try to compensate for WSU’s speed advantage by “by having a lot of hats to the ball.”
“No one really expects us to win a game like this,” he added. “We’re playing with house money.”