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The ESPN Pac-12 blog got up close and personal with the Cougs' nonconference opponents, Portland State, Rutgers, and Wyoming.
Rutgers returns 10 starters from last year's team that defeated the Cougs 41-38 in Seattle and went on to finish 8-5, 3-5 Big Ten. The Scarlet Knights are the only nonconference foe of the Cougars to make it to a bowl game.
In this interesting piece about Rutgers by Bill Connelly, he discusses how Rutgers performed better than expected against teams of similar or worse skills. They then proceeded to lay eggs in their biggest games.
This year Rutgers, like WSU, will be transition in a new quarterback after the graduation of Gary Nova. Lombardi implies that LSU transfer Hayden Rettig will win the quarterback battle. He was a four star prospect out of high school who transferred after redshirting in 2013.
Wyoming, who missed out on a bowl game last year, will also have a new quarterback this season, and they too could be starting a transfer. Cameron Coffman, who transferred from Indiana, threw for nearly 2500 yards in his 14 game Hoosier Career.
Overall Lombardi expects that neither Wyoming nor Portland State will have the athletes to beat WSU, but that Rutgers will definitely have what it takes to beat the Cougars. How many of these three games do you expect the Cougars to bag in 2015?
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