When the Washington State Cougars pulled into town for their improbable road show of a preseason football camp in Lewiston, their bus driver took a peripheral route, along picturesque Snake River Avenue, to their dormitories at Lewis-Clark State College.

But Connor Halliday wasn't necessarily looking starboard toward the Snake River. He was looking port side, on watch for a smallish A-frame house with four slender pillars and a front deck that runs the width of the building.

This was his home for the first five years of his life, before his family moved to Spokane. The family photo stash, the junior quarterback said, includes "a bunch" of images of himself as a tyke, with sun hat and plastic toy hammer, "helping" his father build that deck.

Getting a glimpse of the house on Prospect last week was a pleasant way for Halliday to begin the Cougars' 10-day stay at Lewiston, where the team's leading candidate for a starting QB role is continuing the process of forgetting the most difficult season of his life.

Starter of six games over the past two years, he is trying to fend off the challenge of second-year freshman Austin Apodaca as the Cougars begin their second season under Mike Leach, spending the initial segment of camp in Lewiston to avoid the clutter of construction at their normal practice complex in Pullman.

In sharp contrast to 2012, Halliday heads into the year with a full offseason of work behind him, still reedy at 6-foot-4 and 190 and yet almost 20 pounds heavier than a year ago. Back at full strength, certainly, is his affable, at times surprisingly frank nature.

It's still hard to gauge how extensively he was affected last year by the liver laceration he sustained during a snowy game against Utah in 2011. That excruciating experience, he says, hasn't continued to play mind games with him, the way serious ACL injuries will sometimes impose a streak of timidity on its victims long after the knee has healed. Halliday has never been known for timidity.

But he has always, he said, been known as a fast-metabolism case, and the 2011 injury made it all the more challenging for him to gain weight and to prepare for the next season in any substantial way, until about July.

"I didn't touch a weight for nine months," he said after a practice this week at Sacajawea Junior High in the Lewiston Orchards. "I didn't throw for nine months. I came into camp last year at 172 pounds. I had a month to get ready for a Pac-12 season. I think that's exactly why my season went the way it did."

Swapping and reswapping the No. 1 role with the now-graduated Jeff Tuel until late October, Halliday enjoyed some spectacular moments but was far more proficient at the big-play aspects of Leach's Air Raid offense than the important short and intermediate routes. Hence a 52-percent completion ratio, with 13 interceptions against 15 touchdown passes.

His father, former Boise State quarterback Duane Halliday of Spokane, suspects the problem was more than a lack of offseason preparation.

"I'm not totally convinced that he was 100 percent healthy last year," he said. "I think he is now, though."

Halliday has also devoted more than a year now to the study of Leach's offense, whose emphasis on improvisation and adaptation can be hard to master at first.

"It takes so long to get the route combinations and all that stuff down," the quarterback said. "That's the biggest thing, especially with the slot receivers, having a good relationship throwing hot and all that stuff."

Through six days of camp, Leach has been mostly complimentary of both Halliday and Apodaca, as well as several receivers.

But it wasn't just the statistics, or even the Cougars' 3-9 record, that made last season so difficult for Halliday. It was the off-field turbulence, particularly the messy late-season episode involving star receiver Marquess Wilson, who balked at what he considered harsh conditioning drills and quit the team on acrimonious terms with the coaching staff.

Halliday and Wilson were and are close friends, a fact that contributed to their rapport on the field and played a role in one of the Cougars' most remarkable games of recent years, a 37-27 home win over Arizona State in 2011. Of Halliday's 494 passing yards in that game - a Pac-12 record for a freshman - 223 were to Wilson, who caught three of the QB's four touchdown throws.

"I'm really happy about it in that way, that Marquess and I have something to share," Halliday said. "It will always be special in my memory, a lot more special now just because of the whole Marquess deal.

"I mean, I've gone through some things with family that were really hard to get through, in high school and some things. But other than that, last football season was the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life."

His father can attest to the fact that college football is not always a pleasure cruise.

When Duane and Jessica Halliday (he's in advertising, she's an English teacher) settled into that house on Prospect Avenue 22 years ago, the former Coeur d'Alene High star was coming off a rugged senior season at Boise State in 1990, when he lost a bid to recapture a starting role. He came off the bench to throw for 382 yards in his college finale, but the Broncos lost anyway, in triple overtime to Nevada in the national I-AA semifinals.

Duane Halliday, in fact, was inclined to distance himself entirely from sports during his time in Lewiston.

"It had been a long five-year grind," he said by phone this week, "and I was kind of ready to start another phase of my life."

And he remembers exactly what renewed his enthusiasm for sports. It was that kid with the sun hat and the plastic hammer, insisting they get out the play some ball.

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Grummert may be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2290.