After a 22 point victory over California on Saturday, the WSU football team holds a 4-2 record and is two wins away from a bowl game.

Players at Monday’s press conference showed excitement about the position this team is in; however, the team is still working to improve.

“It’s a big thing to go out there on the road in this conference and get a win,” senior kicker Andrew Furney said. “We just need to take one game at a time and hopefully our goals will be achieved.”

Furney told the media he thought the team grew a bit after the California game. After getting blown out by Stanford in Seattle, bouncing back the next week against California shows how different this team is compared to last year, he said.

“We weren’t thinking about the Stanford game when we were playing Cal,” senior safety Deone Bucannon said. “We just wanted to go into the game and play Cougar football.”

The Cougars will host Oregon State this weekend. The Cougars lost to the Beavers on the road last season by a score of 6-19. According to Bucannon, the defense will prepare differently to stop Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion, who’s already thrown for over 2,000 yards this season.

“We’re not going to take anything from last year,” Bucannon said. “We’re just going to go in like we’ve never played him before.”

The team has watched film on the California game and senior offensive lineman Elliott Bosch said the team focused mainly on what they needed to improve on. WSU has started to watch film of Oregon State and will develop a game plan this week to stop the Beavers.

Two wins away from a bowl game, the Cougars are only thinking about this week’s opponent.

“We’re just trying to win each week,” Bosch said. “We can’t start talking about bowls at all yet. We got a long way to go before we get there.”

Halfway into the season, the Cougars’ 4-2 record is already more wins than the team had last season. Besides taking the season one game at a time, redshirt junior nose tackle Toni Pole has a goal in mind.

“We don’t want to win just two games,” Pole said. “That’s what I feel. I want to win the rest of them and win out.”

Pole and the Cougars look to continue enjoying the taste of winning as they prepare for their game against Oregon State this week.