Gerald Alexander uses a basketball analogy when describing how to slow down Eastern Washington’s explosive offense. In Montana State secondary coach’s parallel, he uses the example of the NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers.
EWU All-American wide receiver Cooper Kupp is LeBron James. Alexander knows the all-time leader in Division I history in yards and touchdowns is going to get his stats when Eastern comes to Bobcat Stadium on Saturday. Kupp has produced against every single team he’s played during his decorated four-year career. Like when an NBA team plays the Cavs, LeBron James will stuff the stat sheet. You just can’t let this supporting cast cut you to the core, Alexander said.
“LeBron is going to get his. You don’t want the other people to kill you,” Alexander said. “When you get those guys involved and this guy starts being successful and that guy gets four touchdowns, this guy gets four touchdowns, that guy gets 170 yards…It’s really about not letting those other guys take advantage of the one-on-one coverage they do get. It’s tough. That’s why those guys are rolling the way they have been.”
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The ascension and dominance of Kupp has been well documented. The three-time All-American earned FCS Offensive Player of the Year honors as a junior and would’ve been a mid-round selection in last spring’s NFL Draft had he entered early. But EWU’s 6-5 finish that included a three-game losing streak to end the season and miss the playoffs for the first time in Kupp’s career caused him to return.
He already shattered the Big Sky Conference records for catches, yards and touchdowns before last year finished. Despite missing the second half of the North Dakota State game and all of the Northern Iowa win with a shoulder injury, Kupp is the Big Sky’s leader in receiving yards (712). He now has 5,476 yards and 63 touchdowns in his career, both Division I records, FBS or FCS. He needs 39 more catches to become the all-time leader in that category.
Kupp is averaging 146 yards per outing this season and his seven touchdowns are among the top 12 totals in the country. He lit up Washington State for 12 catches, 203 yards and three touchdowns in a 45-42 EWU win in Pullman. He missed his single-game school record by one yard by snaring 12 passes for 274 yards and two touchdowns in a 63-30 win over UC Davis.
While Kupp is as dominant an offensive player the FCS has seen since Randy Moss played at Marshall some 20 years ago, he isn’t the only devastating weapon in Eastern’s high octane attack. In his first years as a starter, sophomore quarterback Gage Gubrud is throwing for 394.3 yards per game and averaging 453.3 yards of total offense per game, both the top marks in the FCS. He’s done it by spreading the ball around despite Kupp’s prolific production.
Eastern Washington head coach Beau Baldwin has long said senior wide receivers Kendrick Bourne and Shaq Hill would be No. 1 options on most other teams in the league. Baldwin knows he can ask Bourne or Hill to shoulder more responsibility and they will answer the bell.
When Kupp went down against NDSU, the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Bourne rose up to catch eight passes for 133 yards as EWU pushed the five-time defending national champions to overtime before falling 50-44. With Northern Colorado playing an umbrella coverage to limit anything over the top for Kupp, the 5-foot-10, 180-pound Hill rose up to catch seven balls for 153 yards and four touchdowns.
“They’ve done a great job of being unselfish,” Baldwin said. “All three of those guys are unselfish. They don’t really care who’s having a big game or who is doing well.”
Even with the most prolific receiver in league history drawing all the headlines, Bourne and Hill are still putting up No. 1 receiver numbers in their final seasons at EWU. Bourne has 44 catches for 621 yards and three touchdowns. His catch total is just two less than Kupp and ranks second in the league. His 103.5 yards per game is also the second-best mark in the Big Sky. The lightning fast Hill has 35 catches for 522 yards and a Big Sky-best eight touchdowns. Hill’s 87 receiving yards per game is fourth in the league and his 5.8 catches per game are sixth in the league.
“Cooper Kupp is the best player in the country. Those other guys get overshadowed,” Montana State defensive coordinator Ty Gregorak said. “Bourne, Shaq Hill, those guys are just as good….Cooper for sure and maybe even both the others are going to be making money on Sundays.”
“That’s all three of our mindsets: we want to go to the NFL,” Hill said. “If that’s a chance we all get, it’s a chance we will be blessed enough to take. But our main goal comes before that: to win a national championship.”
Bourne came to Cheney after leading Oregon 6A in receiving yards as a senior at the Milwaukie Arts Academy in Portland. He chose the Eagles over Portland State, Idaho, and Montana. He played right away as a true freshman and has steadily improved ever since. He caught 10 touchdowns as a sophomore and earned All-Big Sky honors each of the last two seasons. Last fall, he caught 73 passes for 998 yards and eight touchdowns.
“KB has taken tremendous strides from where he was as a freshman with little things, run after catch and some other areas where he has improved his game with his overall strength,” Baldwin said. “He’s always had great ball skills. Now he’s really putting it all together.”
Bourne has played almost exclusively on the outside with the addition of passing game coordinator Troy Taylor to the fold. Taylor’s concepts emphasize spreading the field, going four-wide often and using the quarterback as the primary tailback more often than not.
“Our splits, I’ve never lined up outside the numbers,” Bourne said. “We are almost to the sideline sometimes when we are in quads. It’s tough on defenses because they don’t really know what to get in.
“The concepts he brought and how fast he moves with it, it’s really shocking to other teams…We don’t really worry about coverage. Sometimes, we don’t even have to worry about watching film on other teams because we are more worried about spacing and using the whole field.”
Hill wasn’t even supposed to be on this year’s Eagles. Hill earned Freshman All-American honors as one of the most dynamic kick returners in the country in 2012. He earned All-Big Sky honors as a wide receiver in 2013 and 2014, catching 14 touchdowns in the process.
He caught EWU’s first touchdown pass of 2015 at Oregon, but later tore multiple ligaments in his knee, requiring season-ending surgery. He received a hardship waiver from the NCAA — Hill redshirted in 2011 after coming to EWU from Stockton, California —to return this season. But he tore his meniscus again during winter conditioning and had to return to Stockton to rehab once again.
“It was pretty rough,” Hill said. “I had to go back home and be with my family. The hardest part was me not being able to do anything. I couldn’t be active or nothing. I just rehabbed and laid around and gained nothing but weight. The second time, it just made it worse.”
Hill gained 20 pounds because of the immobility stemming from the injury. And he had to watch as EWU lost three straight down the stretch to miss the playoffs.
“It wasn’t as much that I could make a difference but more so me not being able to struggle with the team,” Hill said. “I was at home struggling from a distance so that hurt the most.”
Hill ballooned up to 210 pounds during his lowest moments. He reported to Eastern at 192 pounds after sweating off much of the weight rehabbing in the Southern California heat all last summer. He is down near his ideal playing weight now. And he’s regaining his speed.
“I’m almost there,” Hill said. “I will tell you this: by the end of the season, I’ll be the fastest player in the league again.”
Kupp, Bourne and Hill are just the latest in the long line of stud receiver groups Baldwin has overseen. Since coming to EWU as Paul Wulff’s offensive coordinator in 2003, Baldwin’s offenses have produced quarterbacks and pass catchers at an alarming rate. Gunslingers like Erik Meyer, Matt Nichols, Bo Levi Mitchell and Vernon Adams all earned Big Sky Offensive MVP honors while taking turns shattering records.
Wide receiver groups like Eric Kimble, Raul Fijil and Craig Mcintyre passed the torch to Aaron Boyce, Brynsen Brown and Tony Davis. When Baldwin returned as EWU’s head coach in 2008 — he spent 2007as the head coach at his alma mater Central Washington — the legacy took an even greater step. Brandon Kaufman, Nicolas Edwards and Greg Herd played on EWU’s 2010 national championship team. Edwards and Herd both went over 1,000 yards in 2011 as Mitchell won the Walter Payton Award in 2011. Kaufman set an FCS single-season record with 1,850 receiving yards during Adams’ first year at the helm.
In 2013, that trio passed the torch to Kupp and Hill. Bourne would rise up the following season. Now Edwards is the position coach and the tradition is as strong as ever.
“Since we have been here, that’s always been the standard: best in the nation,” Hill said. “We just built that belief throughout the years and we’ve always felt that way. We break on best in the nation and we talk about it every day. We feel there is no receiving corps in the nation better than us.”
[/restrict]Photos by Ron Sword – EWU Athletics or noted. All Rights Reserved.
