With
2 years left at Wazzu, Mazza isn’t content with being a Groza Award finalist
By
DALE GRUMMERT, Lewiston Trib
PHOENIX
— As sophomore placekicker Blake Mazza addressed Washington State beat writers
a few days after participating in the College Football Awards ceremony in
Atlanta earlier this month, he seemed to wear a certain glow from the
experience. And a certain gratitude.
As
one of three finalists for the Lou Groza Award that eventually went to
Georgia’s Rodrigo Blankenship, Mazza was quick to credit his long snapper, his
holder, his special teams coach. All that was to be expected.
The
wild card was this: He credited the Cougars’ midseason moratorium on social
media for all players and coaches.
When
head coach Mike Leach imposed the ban in late September, he seemed to think
certain players were being distracted by flattering or critical comments and
media stories on Twitter and other services.
For
Mazza, a Texan whose sociable nature is patent, the peril was different. It lay
in the national social-media network of placekickers, especially as his streak
of successful field-goal attempts to start the season grew longer and longer.
“I
think a lot of (kickers) know guys in the conference or around the country who
they’re competing against,” Mazza said. “For kickers, it’s like, ‘OK, this guy
went 5-for-5. That means I need to go 6-for-6.’ Stuff like that. For me, it was
awesome not to see the other guys posting about the kicks they made. Me, it
wasn’t looking up media articles about myself, but really comparing myself to
others. So not having social media definitely allowed me to focus on myself and
each kick, one at a time.”
Which
he obviously did. He went 18-for-18 before finally going wide-right on a
48-yard attempt in the second quarter of the Cougars’ wild 54-53 win Nov. 23
against Oregon State. Included in that streak were conversions from 51, 50, 47
and 45 yards, plus eight others in the 30s.
Heading
into the Cheez-It Bowl here against Air Force at 7:15 p.m. Pacific on Friday (ESPN),
Mazza is 20-for-21 in field goals this season and 30-for-36 in his Cougar
career. Unless he misses a couple of times against the Falcons, he’ll break the
school record for single-season conversion percentage, set in 2013 when Andrew
Furney went 14-for-16.
For
a 5-foot-9 kicker, Mazza has a large personality, a fact that helped him carve
out a small subplot in the WSU episode of “24/7 College Football” that aired on
HBO in October.
He’s
one of several Cougars who proudly claim an Italian heritage, a group that
includes quarterback Anthony Gordon, running back Max Borghi and assistant
coaches Eric Mele and Roc Bellantoni.
“It’s
up in the north part of the mountains — Calabria, Italy,” Mazza said of his
family’s roots on his father’s side. His nicknames on the team, he noted, range
from “Maserati” to “Mazda.”
Accomplished
kickers are a sub-theme here this week. Air Force’s Jake Koehnke is 12-for-12
in field goals this year, with a long of 57 yards, and was a semifinalist for
the same Lou Groza Award for which Mazza was a finalist.
On
top of that, Pat McAfee, who has parlayed his NFL kicking exploits into a
career as a flamboyant TV analyst, has been designated by bowl officials as
“Master of Cheez,” tasked with overseeing a series of promotional stunts.
Mazza, who has attended a number of camps featuring McAfee, won’t pass up a
chance to interact with him.
“I
promise you we will make it happen,” he said.
Whether
the social media ban helped or not, Mazza thinks his focus during the regular
season remained unbroken, even on that solitary field-goal miss against the
Beavers.
“Honestly,
it wasn’t going through my head,” he said of the streak.
He
described his mindset at the time as this: “One kick at a time. I mean, shoot,
I’m going to miss at some point in my career, whether it’s a year later,
professionally. Whatever it is, I’m not going to just continue to make kicks.
So after that 48-yarder I missed, you know what? It’s just something you
rebound from. It’s cool. If anything, it helped me. It gave me a breather. It
was like a reset — you don’t have to feel the pressure.”
Mazza’s
perfect start to the season extended to his point-after attempts, of which he
converted his first 41. The streak ended bizarrely when he missed twice in a
win against Stanford, with one attempt getting blocked at the line of scrimmage
and another getting foiled by a high snap resulting in a straight but short
kick.
Otherwise,
snapper Tyler Williams and holder Oscar Draguicevich III (who doubles as the
Cougars’ skillful punter) have been money.
“I
think our operation — from me, Tyler Williams and Oscar — I think we’re the
best operation in the (Pac-12) conference if not the country,” Mazza said. “Our
field-goal O-line, from our wingers to the whole line, is the best in the
country.”
Most
of them will be around for a while. Draguicevich is a junior, Williams a
second-year freshman. Special teams coach Matt Brock will head into his third
season at the school next year. For those and other reasons, Mazza isn’t
content with being a Groza Award finalist as a sophomore.
“It
would be naive for me to say that I didn’t look at this award as something
like, ‘You’re one of the top kickers in the country.’ That would be lying,” he
said. “Every kid coming out of high school knows they want to be up for that.
Obviously, I want to win it now.”
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