This year has been a roller coaster ride for the Cougar fan base and team. After an early 3-1 start, the Washington State Cougars are now 4-4 and two wins away from being bowl eligible.

The pressure is on for Mike Leach and the football program. There are only four games left in the season: Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, and of course the Apple Cup against UW. With that being said, the question remains: will we be able to win two of those games to get to a bowl game?

In the past couple of games, the Cougars struggled heavily against Oregon State and Oregon. If you combine the two opponents final score, the defense allowed 114 points in just eight quarters. On the offensive side, they have turned the ball over 11 times and have struggled to score at opportune moments. In a nutshell, it’s been a rough couple of weeks for WSU.

However, this Thursday night football game against ASU could be the night the Cougars turn it around. This year, the Pac-12 has been a hard conference to dissect and analyze.

Besides the top tier teams, Oregon, Stanford and UCLA, it’s been unpredictable. Last year USC was argued to be the No. 1 team in the country before the season, and now they are still fighting to get to a bowl game. OSU was ranked No. 25 last week despite losing their opener against Eastern Washington University, a Football Championship Series team, earlier in the year. After upsetting a top-ranked Stanford, Utah followed it up by losing two straight against Arizona and USC.  ASU and UW have both fluctuated between the Top 25 polls. This conference is confusing.

With this past week being a bye week, the Cougars can benefit from getting rest before the highly anticipated Halloween game against ASU on ESPN.

The Sun Devils are favored 13.5 points in the opening line, but a little bit of history is on the Washington State side. The last time ASU played in Pullman was 2011 Dad’s Weekend, which coincidently was Connor Halliday’s first game at the Division-I level. The Cougars pulled off the upset 37-27.

With the atmosphere of Halloween, ESPN, the cold air coming through and after a bye week, the Cougars are slotted in a perfect position to upset the Sun Devils again. However, I don’t believe they will be able to pull it off here. The last time ASU came around, their team was on the verge of collapsing under Head Coach Dennis Erickson. The Sun Devils are a lot more talented and put together this year.

The next game will be against the Arizona Wildcats down in Tucson, Ariz. Although Arizona is a winnable match up, being on the road will be very tough for the WSU team. The last time these two teams faced each other was the 2010 WSU Homecoming game. Arizona has been one of those hard teams to figure out; they haven’t faced tough opponents besides UW. So far this season, they beat Utah and lost to USC.

Before this game, Arizona will play a physical UCLA team, one factor that plays largely in our favor. Arizona likely be banged up when the Cougars visit Tucson. Washington State will be able to contain the 11^th ranked rushing offense in the country and win against Arizona, which puts us one game away from a bowl game.

Next up is Utah, the biggest wild card team in the conference. Their notable games are the win against Stanford, an overtime loss against OSU and a one-possession loss to UCLA, but the thing to take away from those games is that they were at home. On the road, the Utes have lost to USC and Arizona. Luckily for the Cougars, this year the Utah Utes come to Pullman to play.

Utah has its own problems at the quarterback position with Travis Wilson hurt, and has had the same turnover issue the Cougars struggle with. With their record on the road lagging behind, the trend will continue against Washington State. That means the Cougars will be bowl-eligible after the Utah game.

Everyone would love to see the Cougs go into UW’s brand new stadium and win a game in order to get to a bowl game. It would be nice to get six wins before the Apple Cup, but UW is a talented team this year and has last year’s game in the back of their mind. It will be tough to get that sixth win against them on the road.

The skill is there, the potential is there, but the question still remains if WSU is able to handle business over the next few weeks and become bowl eligible. The answer to that question begins Thursday against ASU.