PULLMAN, Wash. \u2014 The Washington State Cougars fell at home in a hard-fought 34-24 loss to former Pac-12 rival Arizona, dropping WSU to 1-3 on the season. The Cougars will now turn their attention to Pac-12 Conference play with a home matchup against Fresno State on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Washington State head coach Kirby Moore joined SWX’s Austin Getz for the “WSU Football Coaches Show” after the game to talk about the takeaways from the loss to the Wildcats, what he’s seeing from quarterback Caden Pinnick and to take a look ahead to the game against Fresno State.<\/p>\n
Moore praised the mindset and fight of his players throughout the game against Arizona, and credited the fast start in the first half for giving the Cougars several opportunities to score points.<\/p>\n
“I love the mindset of our players going into the game,” Moore said. “Starting fast, defense getting a three-and-out, offense scoring, obviously defense there with the turnover, had a number of other opportunities there in the first half. So we really got to learn from that. But it was really good start.”<\/p>\n
“Really appreciate our players’ fight in the second half,” Moore added. “Just didn’t do a good enough job sustaining it on offense. Defense was on the field for a number of snaps there. They got really good players. They got a really good quarterback, right? They made some plays, you know, we didn’t do enough there in the second half.”<\/p>\n
WSU quarterback Caden Pinnick threw for 241 yards and a touchdown and also added 35 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown, but committed two turnovers against the Wildcats. When asked by the media after the game if WSU would consider a change at quarterback, Moore made it clear that he is standing by Pinnick going forward, and reiterated that sentiment.<\/p>\n
“I think you look at the first half from last night and just even in the drop-back pass game, did a really good job of finding completions,” Moore said. “I think going into half, we might have been about 70% completion, didn’t do a good enough job in the second half with the plan and execution there, but Caden gave us many opportunities, and it’s a team game. We got to make sure all 11 are on the same page on offense.”<\/p>\n
Moore also talked about the Cougar defense that has been making plays and creating opportunities for Washington State all season.<\/p>\n
“It’s a combination of being very aggressive with our scheme and then up front, our guys rushing the quarterback,” said WSU’s first-year head coach. “That showed up with the pick last night of Fifita. I think it’s really started up front. He was starting to feel the pressure, had a couple sacks, a couple hurries. He rushes one right there. We’re in the right place in the secondary. That’s got to continue, and something we got to build on.”<\/p>\n
As the Cougars turn their focus to Saturday’s Pac-12 matchup with the Fresno State Bulldogs, Moore spoke on what he expects to see as Washington State navigates the new-look conference.<\/p>\n
“We’re really excited,” Moore said. “There’s a combination of teams who are scoring really fast, playing with tempo, huddling, a lot of different programs with a ton of tradition, so it’s gonna be very competitive. There’s gonna be a lot of one-score games, and it’s gonna be about playing well under pressure.”<\/p>\n
Moore is no stranger to some of the new additions to the Pac-12, having played his collegiate ball at Boise State and spent six years on the offensive coaching staff at Fresno State from 2017 to 2022. Moore said he has a lot of respect for the tradition and success of the new programs joining the conference this season.<\/p>\n
“It helps with an understanding of the environment that we’re going into and the respect that we should have for that program,” Moore said. “The number of bowl games they’ve won too, the number of victories they’ve had, the style they’re gonna play. There’s been a lot of turnover at those places, but they’re all doing a really good job here in the nonconference, and we’re excited to compete with them in conference play.”<\/p>\n
The Cougars will be in front of the home fans at Gesa Field for the final game of their three-game homestand when they host Fresno State at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 3.<\/p>\n
Watch the full One-on-One with Kirby Moore above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PULLMAN, Wash. \u2014 The Washington State Cougars fell at home in a hard-fought 34-24 loss to former Pac-12…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,11041,23535,23532,23534,127,23533,23536],"class_list":["post-478583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-local-sports","tag-local-sports-news","tag-spokane","tag-spokane-sports","tag-sports","tag-sports-spokane","tag-wasington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}