Mike Hamilton was walking up the hill toward Martin Stadium on Saturday, proudly sporting a custom-made, blaze orange “Pac-2” T-shirt, when a Washington State fan heckled him with unkind, unprintable words about his beloved Oregon State Beavers.

What happened next isn’t part of the normal fan experience.

“The Cougars around him all came to our defense,” the Oregon State alum said.

Ain’t solidarity grand?

It’s a harmonious alliance between the two schools left behind by conference realignment.

Ahem.

Then Saturday’s game started.

And then Oregon State found itself left behind by the Cougars, too.

Washington State thumped the Beavers. Cougars quarterback Cameron Ward dazzled and left the OSU defense dizzied.

The scoreboard said 38-35, but for most of the night it wasn’t that close. It came down to an onside kick that Oregon State nearly recovered, but did it really?

Once fellowship was replaced by football, all that was left to see was an Oregon State team that has a lot of questions to answer if it wants to be a factor in the final year of the Pac-12.

Like will this defense be able to slow down any of these explosive Pac-12 offenses?

And after all the hype, is DJ Uiagalelei really just ordinary?

I trust Jonathan Smith to make the necessary adjustments. This can still be a big season for his Beavers. But with higher expectations comes more direct criticism.

The Beavers won 10 games last year. They were ranked 14th in the country entering Saturday. Earlier this summer, Dan Wetzel, the excellent Yahoo Sports columnist, recognized the plight of the Beavers in realignment for the tragedy it is and implored fans around the country to root for Oregon State to win the Pac-12.

Maybe he meant to write Washington State.

Hard to win the Pac-12 when you don’t win the Pac-2.

On the Cougars’ postgame radio show, a Washington State fan called in from the ribbon of highway that leads north to Spokane and, along the way passes through Colfax — where OSU and Wazzu are courtroom compatriots in their legal battle against the Pac-12 — and offered this token of friendship:

“Now Oregon State has to do the same thing as us, run the table so we can see them in Vegas.”

Solidarity, it turns out, really is grand.

At least when you’re on the winning end of it.

But right now, I don’t know how any Beaver could feel confident about this season leading to that final Pac-12 championship game.

The Beavers have a short week before hosting 4-0 Utah on Friday.

After containing Ward a year ago in Corvallis, the Beavers had no answers in Pullman. He torched the Beavers for 404 yards and completed 28 of 34 passes, including four touchdowns.

“We just weren’t challenging him enough,” OSU safety Kitan Oladapo said.

Oregon State’s defense has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last two years under defensive coordinator Trent Bray. In their first three games combined, the Beavers had allowed just six points before halftime.

Two field goals. That’s it.

On Saturday?

They gave up more points by the second play, a 63-yard touchdown bomb.

They trailed 14-0 before all fans had made it into the stadium from the tailgates.

Perhaps this was an anomaly, maybe not, but this was the worst performance the Beavers have had since Smith tapped Bray for the job in November 2021.

Bray went to high school in Pullman, where his dad was a coach on Mike Price’s staff. His first job in football was working on the Cougars’ sideline, carrying the cables attached to defensive coordinator Bill Doba’s headset.

If anyone understood the backdrop of Saturday’s matchup, it was certainly Bray.

But that had little bearing on what happened on the field.

Ward slipped out of the grasp of Oregon State tacklers, Cougars receivers hauled in one-handed catches. On the Cougars’ third touchdown, to go up 21-7 in the second quarter, Washington State’s Josh Kelly spun out of a tackle, leading three Beavers defenders to crash into each other.

Just that kind of night. The Cougars never punted. The one time they lined up in punt formation, from their own 29 in the third quarter, coach Jake Dickert called for a fake that went 18 yards and eventually set up yet another touchdown from Ward to Kelly.

It’s a small comfort that the Beavers didn’t buckle. They rallied in the fourth quarter, sure. Uiagalalei, who completed half of his 34 passes for 198 yards, finally found a rhythm and led the Beavers on two touchdown drives in the final 6:18 to set up that onside kick.

We almost had our first Pac-2 After Dark moment.

“Too little,” running back Deshaun Fenwick said, “too late.”

Maybe Hamilton, the OSU fan, can put that on a T-shirt.

2Little2Late.