Utah football hungry for bounce-back vs. Washington State in Week 5

It’s the heart of the Pac-12 season and Utah football travels to Pullman to take on Washington State. Here’s a preview, prediction and how to watch.

This is sure to be an interesting game between the Cougars and the Utes. It’s #Pac12AfterDark action, and “The Pirate” Mike Leach will summon the moths to Pullman. Both teams are attempting to rebound from what can only be categorized as disappointing losses.

The Utes were undisciplined and played poorly on defense in a 30-23 loss. Both starting quarterback Tyler Huntley and starting running back Zack Moss were hobbled in the game and are questionable against the Cougars.

Only in the Pac-12 can your quarterback throw nine touchdown passes, your teams scores 63 points and you still lose the game — in regulation. That is exactly what happened in Pullman last week as the Cougars squandered a 49-17 lead — not a typo folks — in the second half and fell to the UCLA Bruins 67-63.

Coming into this game, the Utes are looking to clean up a lot of mental mistakes, and the Cougars are looking for a defense — UCLA just scored again by the way. These factors should make this an interesting watch.

Here’s how you can watch Saturday’s big game:

Date: Saturday, Sept. 28
Time: 10 p.m. ET
Location: Pullman, Wash.
Venue: Martin Stadium
TV: FS1
Streaming: FOX Sports Go

Keys to Victory

For Washington State, it seems fairly simple, don’t squander a big lead. I have no words for what happened in Pullman last week, but give it up to UCLA for not giving up. The box score looks like something out of EA Sports NCAA Football 2014. Those were video game numbers both teams put up. We know the Cougars won’t be able to do that against the Utes, and Utah should know how to play the air-raid since they just played an air-raid team in USC.

The Cougars are going to have to figure out how to stop the Utes from grinding this game out. If either Huntley or Moss don’t play, expect to see a lot of runs by a lot of different people. They did a running back by committee last week after Moss went out against USC and had success. In addition the Utes want to keep the Cougar offense on the bench.

Here we go with the little things bit again. Yes, I used this in my preview of the USC vs. Utah game, and every bit of it turned out to be true. Utah has to play smarter. They can’t have drive-killing penalties like they did last week against USC. They blow the doors off USC if they stay on schedule. Same thing here. This becomes even more important if one or both of their star players on offense don’t play.

Prediction

This one’s tough since we don’t know the status of Huntley or Moss for Utah, or Washington State’s defense. Even if one or both don’t play Utah has the edge because the Cougars don’t have the talent at receiver that USC does. The Utes won’t have to contend with the length or the speed they had to in Los Angeles. The Cougars have been decent against the run, but they haven’t faced this type of physicality up front this season.

Final Score: Utah 28, Washington State 21