(Written by kencraw)

The game went about like I expected. If WSU had converted on one of those drives that died when they got close, my pre-game prediction (31-24) could have been exactly right.

Things I liked:

• The workman like quality of the win… the Bears knew what they needed to do and got it done.
• Keenan Allen… great game for him. That long touchdown was a thing of beauty.
• Secondary getting their hands on a lot of balls… FINALLY Steve Williams is back to his old self and the rest of the secondary is joining him in making far more plays on the ball than in the first few games of the season.
• Running backs… they all played pretty well and came in for each other as they got banged up. Bigelow is FAST. CJ is tough and has more speed than in the past. Isi might be the weakest of the 3 but is doing fine.
• Offensive line dominated like they should.

Things I didn’t like:

• Secondary penalties… I’ll definitely take the bad with the good here, I’d rather have them batting a lot of balls and getting a few penalties, but this could be improved.
• Bad calls by the refs… A few of those secondary penalties were pretty bogus. Also, the instant replay booth looks to be replaced by a monkey with a coin to flip. It sometimes went in our favor (and other times it didn’t), but there was no consistency in the booth.
• Maynard locking on Allen… 14 completions total, 11 of them to Keenan Allen? That will work against a weak team, but it will not work against the better teams.
• The last drive of the first half… were we running out the clock or were we going for the score? Because what we did was injure a couple of players doing neither.
• 7:30 game… they stink and need to be run faster.

Will post both the very late tOSU and WSU podcasts later today as well as more detailed thoughts in addition to starting to look forward to Stanford (and some thoughts on their game against ND.)