WSU 65, San Diego 61: Quick Recap

The Cougars faced yet another stiff challenge from another lowly WCC team, but this time they survived thanks to a monster second half performance from point guard Nate Calmese, who finished with a game-high 27 points.

WSU came out of the gate hot, as they often do, reeling off 13 unanswered points to start the game behind some hot shooting. The Toreros wouldn’t score their first bucket until nearly four minutes had elapsed, and WSU answered that with two more buckets to extend their lead to 18-2 and send their win probability soaring to about 95%.

They started to play like it was 100% … and San Diego did not. The Toreros outscored the Cougs 25-7 over the remainder of the half, as WSU embarked on one of the worst stretches of offensive basketball you’ll ever see — and that’s saying a lot, given some of the offensive play we’ve watched over the years. Here are all of WSU’s made baskets and free throws in the first half. Notice when their final make from the field was, and notice when they stopped scoring all together:

Following that Tomas Thrastarson layup with 9:23 to go in the half, the Cougars committed an absurd eight turnovers; they would go nearly seven minutes without even taking a shot. It meant that — despite playing generally serviceable defense — USD would take a 27-25 lead into the locker room.

The second half didn’t start much better, but eventually, they woke up — or, at least, Calmese did. One of the major culprits of the first half problems (5 points, 2-of-8 shooting, no free throws, 4 turnovers), he quite literally swooped in to rescue his team. When he returned to the game with a little over 14 minutes to go (after picking up two quick fouls to start the half), he scored 11 of the Cougs’ next 14 points to give WSU a 1-point lead with eight minutes to go.

San Diego wouldn’t go away, but neither would the Cougs. Every time the Toreros threatened to open up a significant lead, either Calmese would answer back or WSU would take a trip to the free throw line as the fouls piled up on USD. The decisive stretch came with about 2:30 to go: Following (yet another) layup from Santiago Trouet to push San Diego’s lead back to 4, Dane Erikstrup and Calmese hit 3s on back-to-back possessions to give WSU the lead it would finally not relenquish.

From there, it was mostly about making free throws, and though San Diego hit a desperation 3 with seven seconds to go to make it a little bit uncomfortable, the Cougars took care of business down the stretch to seal the win.

Whew.

In A Minute

• Cougfan recap by Friend of the Podcast Jamey Vinnick

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: Nate Calmese with 27 points on 9-of-17 shooting (3-of-8 from 3), 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals … and 6 turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: WSU got killed on the defensive glass, with USD rebounding 44% of its misses — well above its season average. That turned into 17 second chance points, fueling the Toreros’ offense.

WCC Standings

Highlights

Three Thoughts

1. A win is a win

Look: I’m not going to sugar coat it and use flowery words to try and tell you that this was some sort of wonderful win that should inspire you going forward. It definitely should not. This team is struggling a lot right now, and there are a number of reasons why. But the bottom line is very simple: Winning is always better than losing, even if it’s ugly, even if it’s reflective of larger issues.

The simplest explanation is that the injuries are finally catching up with them. Beyond the fact that they’re just tired from logging so many minutes with so few players — which I think is true — they’re also finally getting exposed a bit for how the injuries have limited David Riley’s ability to deploy talent strategically.

The scout against the Cougs seems to be to use long players to play very tight and aggressive on the perimeter, overplaying every pass and every handoff while also trying to stay on the hip in the post to entice an entry that can be stabbed away — even with smaller players. It’s mostly working because there just isn’t anyone on the bench Riley can turn to in order to change the look. Anyone they bring off the bench is a non-shooting threat, further limiting the ways they can attack. So, the team keeps trying to pound it in there, trying to get an advantage with a quick pass … and they keep turning it over.

Are there other ways they can get better? Sure. Like, maybe quit throwing the ball away with ill-conceived passes? (More on that in a second.) But the fundamental issues aren’t going to change until Isaiah Watts comes back, and that seems to still be at least a week away. For that reason, you just take a win however you can get it right now … even if it’s a comeback win on the road against the 293rd team on kenpom.

2. As Nate goes, so goes WSU

Relatedly, thank god for Calmese, where it’s become increasingly clear that he’s really the bell cow for the team. When he’s at his best, slicing into the lane and finishing at the rim, it changes the whole geometry of the offense and makes everyone else better; when he can’t (or won’t) penetrate, and he’s throwing bad passes all over the place … it really short circuits everything.

Such is the importance of a point guard who is also being counted on to carry a significant scoring load — to say nothing of what’s being asked on him on the defensive end, where he exerts extraordinary effort (and comes up with a ton of steals). Both “Nates” were on display in this one:

It’s not often you see a guy go from basically unplayable to winning the game for you from half to another. But that’s exactly what happened.

3. About the turnovers

I’ve been meaning to write an in-depth newsletter specifically about the turnovers, and maybe I still will … but damn, I don’t think I can avoid it here any longer. Here’s the short version, from my perspective: Riley’s teams are always going to commit more turnovers than you like because of aggressive passing, but the tradeoff is that it leads to a higher number of high-quality looks than a more conservative approach would, so it’s generally a net positive. That’s how he built his excellent offenses at Eastern.

But it’s a fine line between being aggressive and being cavalier, and WSU tips way too far to the “cavalier” side far too often. It’s one thing to try to fire in an aggressive entry pass to the post for an easy bucket that doesn’t quite come off; it’s something all together different when the turnovers come from what should be routine plays that aren’t even going to lead directly to a bucket: blindly making passes to initiate the offense only to have them easily picked off, hasty passes up court after gaining possession that get tipped or intercepted, half-assed seals of defenders on a high-post handoff … all things that happened last night. It’s neutering this offense’s potential, and somehow, some way they have to tighten up those turnovers.

By the way: This doesn’t really fall in the dumb turnover category, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team get stripped as much as we do. Maybe that’s a strength thing, but I also have to think there’s an improvement in technique that can take place to make it less likely we fumble the ball when moving into traffic.

Up Next

The Cougars return to Pullman for a rematch on Saturday with the Portland Pilots, whom they eviscerated on the road a few weeks ago. Hopefully this becomes a get-right game heading into what is a huge week — Santa Clara away on Thursday and Saint Mary’s at home on Saturday both loom large to any NCAA at-large chances.

Tip off is at 6 p.m. PT, with ESPN+ handling the broadcast once again.