[CTcard]

While I understand the criticism of Leach's clock-management skills, did those have anything to do with this loss? If he had used up more time earlier in the game, Washington State would have had less time to get down the field on that last drive.

That's a little hard to tell, though probably it didn't ultimately have anything to do with the cougs losing.

The relevant moment was when they got the ball back, 5:08 on the clock, their own 28, up 28-27.
The first set of downs they ran for 3 yards, 4 yards, then got sacked on third down but the sack was wiped out by a holding penalty on one of our DBs. They didn't run down the play clock between plays.
Presumably spooked by the close call, reverted to all passing and they went incomplete, INT.

So, maybe on that drive they could have eaten the clock and not given us much of a chance to respond. Maybe if they had called more runs they would not have thrown an INT. But, it seems unlikely they could have sustained first downs running if we were expecting that, were going to have to pass at some point, and as it turned out, in only five plays they weren't going to run the clock out.

[CTcard]

While I understand the criticism of Leach's clock-management skills, did those have anything to do with this loss? If he had used up more time earlier in the game, Washington State would have had less time to get down the field on that last drive.

That's a little hard to tell, though probably it didn't ultimately have anything to do with the cougs losing.

The relevant moment was when they got the ball back, 5:08 on the clock, their own 28, up 28-27.
The first set of downs they ran for 3 yards, 4 yards, then got sacked on third down but the sack was wiped out by a holding penalty on one of our DBs. They didn't run down the play clock between plays.
Presumably spooked by the close call, reverted to all passing and they went incomplete, INT.

So, maybe on that drive they could have eaten the clock and not given us much of a chance to respond. Maybe if they had called more runs they would not have thrown an INT. But, it seems unlikely they could have sustained first downs running if we were expecting that, were going to have to pass at some point, and as it turned out, in only five plays they weren't going to run the clock out.