Saint Mary’s 77, WSU 56: Quick Recap

The Washington State Cougars followed a familiar road script on Saturday, fighting hard for a half before wilting after the break and eventually getting blown out on the road, this time by the powerful Gaels.

WSU started well enough, as it often does, getting five straight buckets in the paint to start the game with some nifty screens and cuts to jump out to a 10-3 lead with four minutes gone. That’s when Paulius Murauskas took over for SMC, as the Cougars had no answer to slow down the 6-foot-8 forward who is as comfortable beyond the arc as he is abusing people down low; a 3 and a layup on back-to-back possessions tied the game for the first time, with 12:47 to go in the half. The Gaels then surged into the lead with him on the bench, going on a 13-4 run over the next six minutes to seize a nine-point lead.

The Cougs did keep battling: With 3:19 to go in the half, an 8-0 spurt started by a LeJuan Watts layup and capped by a pair of Ethan Price 3s erased the margin with a couple of minutes to go before the break. They didn’t score again, and a couple of Marauskas layups pushed the margin to four at half, but all told: It didn’t feel like a terrible position to be in.

That thought was quickly put to rest after halftime, with the Gaels outscoring WSU 19-4 over the first six minutes. Four different players scored for SMC, with seven of the Gaels’ eight baskets being either dunks or layups, to take a 19-point lead and put the game to bed.

A little 8-0 run closed the gap to 12 with just under eight minutes to play … but the Cougars could only muster four points in the remainder of the game to lose by 21.

Pain.

In A Minute

• Cougfan recap from Friend of the Pod Jamey Vinnick

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: Isaiah Watts with 12 points (4-of-11 shooting), 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, 1 turnover.

• One stat to tell the tale: WSU shot just 41% on 2s. For the season, they’ve made 58% of their shots inside the arc.

Highlights

Since WSU inexplicably no longer makes highlight videos for games it doesn’t win, here’s David Riley’s postgame radio hit.

Three Thoughts

1. Wash, rinse, repeat

Let’s be clear: There’s no shame in losing to Saint Mary’s on the road. The Gaels are clearly the class of the WCC and a top 25-type team. They might even play themselves into a top 4 seed in the NCAA tournament next month, depending on how the WCC tournament goes.

But context matters here — not only did this game unfold like so many others, it was the third time in their last five road games that the Cougars lost by more than 20 points, all to teams in the top half of the WCC. Even if any singular result is somewhat defensible, this kind of Groundhogs Day performance has a way of beating down a fan; I confess I couldn’t even bring myself to finish watching the game. I turned it off with 10 minutes to play and Saint Mary’s holding a 20-point lead so I could play some video games instead, monitoring the finish on a scoreboard app.

There’s nothing quite like having the team get the week off, looking forward to finally getting to watch some Cougar hoops again, only to be met with yet another game in which WSU can’t defend, struggles to rebound, throws the ball away repeatedly, and generally lacks the mental fortitude (and maybe even conditioning?) to compete for 40 minutes before not just losing, but getting embarrassed and run off the floor.

It’s such a depressing turnabout from where the team started the season, when they infused us all with some much-needed energy in the wake of football’s late-season collapse and Jake Dickert’s backdoor departure.

In my mind, they’ve now committed greatest sin that any sports team.

They’re uninteresting.

I haven’t felt this feeling since … well …

2. It’s the defense, silly

The offense was pretty putrid yesterday, but for the most part, WSU has still done just fine at putting the ball in the basket during this whole mess. WSU’s ability to keep the other team from doing the same, however, has basically disappeared. Beyond grabbing people to stop them from blowing by for another layup, the Cougars offer practically no resistance to the opponent.

Here’s a plot of each game’s adjusted defensive efficiency. You might notice a trend since those games against Nevada and Boise State convinced us that Riley had figured out how to coach defense:

Over their last 10 games, they’re 222nd in adjusted defensive efficiency (compared to everyone else’s last 10). Believe it or not, that’s actually a massive improvement from where it was before the game, because allowing 1.22 points to Saint Mary’s isn’t horrible, and that abomination at home to Pacific is now 11 games ago.

If there’s any way — ANY WAY AT ALL — to get these guys merely defending like a top 150 defense, they could win three of the last four. But it has to start on that end. If it doesn’t, it really won’t matter what they do offensively.

3. Tournament positioning

That said, there’s still time left to salvage something from this disaster. WSU has four games remaining, the next three at home — starting with Gonzaga on Wednesday — and they’re just one game back in the loss column from Loyola Marymount for sixth place in the WCC. That’s important, because the difference between 6th and 7th is massive in the conference’s wacky bracket that is designed (rightly, IMO) to protect higher seeds.

If the Cougs can recapture some magic on their way to finishing in the top six, they’d be in position to need four wins in four days to grab the league’s autobid. I’m not saying it’s likely or plausible or anything like that, but every year, there’s a team somewhere in the country that won four games in four days to catch some of that March magic. You could at least allow yourself to dream big.

Finish 7th, 8th, or 9th? You’d need five games in five days. That’s almost certainly an impossible scenario.

Up Next: Gonzaga!

Depending on your viewpoint, you could either be very excited for this one or seriously dreading it.

Gonzaga’s first appearance at Beasley in well over a decade — even if forced by this bastardized conference affiliation — is assuredly cool. Mark Few has to get on that sideline after killing the series, and the coliseum will be as full as it’s been since Klay Day; the atmosphere will be through the roof.

Of course, the makeup of that audience is like to be split down the middle between the two fanbases, give or take 10%. And the Bulldogs will be favored by double digits, surging as they are (four straight wins, all by double digits) and with a win against the Cougs at home already in their pockets.

For Spokane Cougs — at least, the ones who don’t weirdly align themselves with both schools — this probably feels like an old school Apple Cup ass kicking incoming, complete with the trash talk that will follow in it wake.

Here’s to hoping the team can reach deep into its bag one more time.

Tip off is on Wednesday at 6 p.m. PT, with the game to be broadcast on ESPN2.