PULLMAN — For the 107th Apple Cup, Washington State trotted out as many talismans as it could find: Steve Gleason, the heroic former Cougar afflicted with ALS; Mike Price, who coached the team to two Rose Bowls; even a wintry 19-degree night, the sort mythology holds will inevitably trip up the Huskies.

Nothing worked, and that includes the Cougar passing game and the season, which ends fecklessly with a 3-9 record that provides a bookend to the first year of the three-season Mike Leach regime.

It’s over now. Well, it was really over by the first half here in frigid Martin Stadium, by which time reality was sinking in to the 32,952 hardy souls: This was going to be the Huskies’ night.

“We didn’t get into much of a rhythm on offense early,” Leach said.

Early, middle, whenever. Only when it didn’t matter, and when the Huskies were threatening the first shutout of Leach’s career, did the Cougars assemble anything effective on offense.

Washington wins, 31-13, and if it’s possible, the score doesn’t completely do justice to the schooling.

The crowd was expectant, hoping for a morsel to carry into the offseason, like the Cougars delivered with a comeback win in Leach’s first year of 2012. Instead, WSU’s offense belched like a ’64 Corvair, and the defense, while game, wasn’t up to playing flawlessly.

Bottom line, there was next to nothing to get the crowd engaged, save for a stirring, four-minute tribute to Gleason between the first and second quarters when he was inducted into the school’s hall of fame.

“I love Steve Gleason,” said receiver Isiah Myers afterward, “what he’s about and how he’s a fighter. He makes me appreciate what I have.”

“He’s ridiculously impressive,” Leach said. “With his affliction, he’s continued to develop in a huge way. It’s just an incredible example for everybody.”

As if drawing momentary strength from the former two-sport grad, the Cougars got their first interception since Sept. 13 moments later, by Cyrus Coen off a tipped pass.

But their early offensive misfires set the tone. They penetrated Husky territory on their first three drives, to the 42, 20 and 33, and got nothing – the first two marches fizzling on fourth down after second-and-twos.

On the middle one, Dom Williams dropped a perfect 20-yard touchdown strike from Luke Falk that would have tied the score at 7 and provided the fans, and the Cougars, some juice.

“The balls we dropped were devastating,” Leach said.

Said Falk: “We just gotta finish. If we do that, it’s a whole different ball game.”

The Huskies blitzed Falk hard once and he made them pay with a 39-yard gain to Vince Mayle. The rest of the night, they played conventionally, and that seemed to wear on Falk, making his third start after Connor Halliday’s injury.

“Thought he tried to make too much happen,” Leach said. “And then tried to be too perfect.” Sometimes Falk vacated the pocket too early, and “sometimes there was stuff we’d have quick and we just didn’t react to it as quickly as we needed to,” Leach said.

The Cougars could have lived with the 7-0 deficit at half, but Mayle fumbled with 1:36 left before the break and Washington took it in, nudged farther when Jeremiah Allison gave an unnecessary shove to his god-brother and LA high school classmate, Jaydon Mickens, into the UW tuba section along the sideline for a personal foul.

That made it two touchdowns, and it might as well have been five. The Husky defense was sound, the crowd was petering out, and the night was a downer for the home folks, the electricity seemingly having peaked when the Cougars met the Huskies on the hashmark toward the UW sideline to protest some pre-kickoff boogieing.

“I kind of saw that coming,” said WSU linebacker Peyton Pelluer. “They were dancing on our logo. Obviously, we couldn’t let that happen. We went out there to confront them.”

So the year dribbled into a messy little 3-9 finish for WSU, one in which it didn’t win a conference home game. Since late in the 2007 season, the Cougars have won a grand total of four league games on home turf.

“I don’t think we took a step back at all,” Myers said. “Obviously, we lost players (to injury). We had an awesome season. We really played our (butts) off.”

He’s a college kid who must have relished the experience, so we’ll cut him some slack on that “awesome.” Safe to say, among crimson fans, that’s an exceedingly tough sell.

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