WSU wraps up spring practice on Tuesday

After a tough spring of high intensity football practices, a team's spring game can sometimes be seen as a culmination of everyone's hard work and a way to welcome in summer... But not this time.

Once again this year, the Cougs will hold practice 15 after their spring finale game. A lot of teams like to do it this way so they can look at tape and hammer out some final adjustments after watching tape from a game like situation.

And it looks like at least one player took some of his spring game criticism to heart. Peyton Bender led the way for the losing team and -- after the game -- wasn't so hot on his own performance in a game where the team's third QB, Tyler Hilinski, wowed some observers.

According to Jacob Thorpe's write up of the final practice, Bender was the shining star of Tuesday's spring finale.

He began the session with a series of body blows – short passes that brought the defense up to the line of scrimmage. A 15-yard pass to Martin, a five yarder to James Williams, 10 more yards to Martin.

Then Bender took the top off the defense with a beautiful pass over the safeties that hit Robert Lewis perfectly in stride for what ended up being a 62-yard score (let's say the ball traveled about 30 yards in the air). Bender hit Kyrin Priester for 20 yards, and then Martin for a 48-yard touchdown.

Now, Hilinski pretty clearly had the better spring game, but that doesn't mean that he has the number 2 spot on the depth chart locked up. Bender had the better spring overall and that's what really matters to coaches in the end.

But let's all agree on two things: (1) A competition for second string QB is better than a competition for starting QB and (2) Let's all hope we never have to find out who Luke Falk's back up is next season.

Now that Spring ball is over, the Cougs have a long summer full of strength and conditioning workouts ahead of them before fall camp kicks off in August.

Football

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