In today's newsletter ...

• In A Minute

• Highlights

• Three Thoughts

  • 1. Defensive shutdown

  • 2. Jones — the anti-DeVries

  • 3. Winning the glass

• Up Next: Previewing Iowa State

No. 7 WSU 66, No. 10 Drake 61: Quick Recap

With their backs against the wall, the Washington State Cougars did what they’ve done so many times this year: Found a way to win with clutch plays down the stretch. Only this time, it was in the first round of the NCAA tournament, which means these plays will live on in WSU basketball lore, having sent us to the second round to face No. 2 seed Iowa State for the right to advance to the Sweet 16.

Down 8 with 6:45 to play, the Cougs’ win probability had sunk to just 12.6%, but a 7-0 spurt — a pair of free throws by Jaylen Wells, a 3 from Andrej Jakimovski, a post move from Isaac Jones — closed it to 1 with five minutes to go.

Game on. From there it was back and forth, until Isaiah Watts did his thing. (Can you spot a Craig?):

The Cougs were suddenly up 2 with 2 minutes to go, and Drake was forced to try and win the game without their most effective player, center Darnell Brodie, who had fouled out. Tucker DeVries, the much-hyped go-to guy for the Bulldogs, was nowhere to be found. Sandwiched around a missed jumper from Myles Rice was a missed 3 from Atin Wright and a turnover from Kevin Overton, and from there it was a free throw contest with just over a minute to go.

Watts hit a pair, Jakimovski hit 3-of-4, and it was over.

The Cougs move on!

In A Minute

• Stats

• Advanced stats

• Line o’ the night: Jaylen Wells with 17 points (on 11 attempts, including 3-4 from 3), 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 1 turnover. The rebounding was absolutely huge.

• Line o’ the night (2): Isaac Jones with 20 points (on 13 attempts, including 8-10 on FTs), 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, 3 turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: 43% — Drake’s free throw percentage on 14 attempts, more than 30% worse than their season mark. Had they made them at a normal rate, they’d have had 4 or 5 more points.

Highlights

Three Thoughts

On Wednesday, I wrote about three reasons why Drake didn’t scare me. Let’s check in on each of those!

1. Defensive shutdown

REASON 1: WSU’s defense routinely shuts down teams with offenses much better than Drake’s.

Last night, Drake scored a paltry 0.92 points per possession — a number that’s fairly common for WSU to allow, but extremely uncommon for the Bulldogs to score. In fact, 0.92 was their second-lowest of the season which, as you might know, is now over! The biggest factor, of course, was a hugely inefficient performance from Tucker DeVries.

He was the one thing that scared me about Drake, and he had a dreadful game: Just 14 points on 18 shots. He did rescue a bit of his efficiency with 6 assists, but his offensive rating of 85 — roughly 20% worse than the average D-I contribution — was his lowest in months and fourth-lowest of the season. I suspected he’d have a tougher time with WSU’s length and athleticism than he had had with the defenders he faced in the MVC, and it was true. Jakimovski did the bulk of the heavy lifting, but Wells, Jones, and even Kymany Houinsou each took turns.

All of them battled with DeVries around screens, and once he gave up the ball, they made it difficult for him to get hit back. On the occasions he was determined to shoot, they harassed him into tough shots. There’s no more telling stat than his 2-of-11 performance on midrange jumpers — he normally hits 43% of those.