*SWX has begun a new weekly program with the arrival of Mike Leach at Washington State. Press Pass Pullman airs every Monday night at 10 p.m., right before SWX Tonight.
Press Pass Pulllman features the highlights from Monday's media day in Pullman. And because Coach Leach limits the availability of players to the media during the week, the weekly program on SWX is a must-see for true Cougar fans!
The consistent theme throughout Monday's weekly news conference with Washington State was one word: consistency. Coach Mike Leach addressed it. Running back Carl Winston addressed it. Linebacker Darryl Monroe addressed it. And everyone else was thinking it.
Leach said his Cougars showed some "really positive" things on Saturday against Eastern Washington, but the inconsistency on all sides of the ball was the negative part.
Coach Leach on playing Eastern Washington:
"Anytime you get these deals where everybody is just a few miles apart, every time I've done it, they're just funny games. Everybody thought about going to this school or that school and everybody went to high school together and stuff like that, so it really creates this near-proximity rivalry – whatever it's called. The ball bounced that way and I think there was erratic play, really on both teams a little bit. But the one thing I thought [EWU] did impressively was they didn't seem to have the ups and downs we did."
Leach said he admired the way Eastern Washington played "really hard". And Leach said he was disappointed in the way his team let down in the third quarter.
On Jeff Tuel, his injuries and whether he will play against UNLV:
"We don't have injuries here."
That's all.
Highlights of Carl Winston's portion of the news conference:
Winston said running was part of the gameplan on Saturday. Eastern Washington put five players in the box and played a deep zone to contain the passing game, so the Cougars tried to take advantage of that.
Winston on whether the team has an increased measure of confidence now with a win:
"We're confident. Like I said, we went out there and executed pretty good for the most part besides the penalties we had out there. We know what we're capable of doing. We worked so hard, we know what we're capable of. We know we can go out and make plays, we know we can go out and win, so it's just being consistent."
Winston on how important bouncing back after a loss to BYU was:
"It was very important that we put that game behind us. Obviously we didn't play at the level we wanted to play. In this offense it's about being productive, and Coach Leach really emphasizes that. Your playing time is based on your production, so if you produce you're gonna play."
The defensive perspective:
Linebacker Darryl Monroe said the defense as a whole made a marked improvement from Game 1 to Game 2, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
"I think the defense is progressing pretty good, but I wouldn't say I'm satisfied with the way we played because I know we can display a lot more than we displayed – against EWU and of course against BYU. I feel like there's a lot more that we have stored… I feel we were a lot better, but we still have a long way to go."
Monroe on playing UNLV in Las Vegas this week:
"We learn from our mistakes. We learned from Week 1, we learn from Week 2 and now we just kind of capitalize on everything we fell short of so that when we get to UNLV in a hostile environment we know what to expect. We just go in there and we just have to learn to be more consistent and play how we know we can play."
Kicker Andrew Furney on whether he would change anything about his kick or celebration:
"Not a thing."
© Coach Mike Leach said his team did some good things on Saturday against EWU, but he would like to see more consistency on all sides of the ball (Photo: SWX)
