I cannot promise I will always have time for this, both in terms of watching every women’s game (I sometimes can’t) and writing about each of them (I only have so much time!). However, since the first day of the basketball season is a celebration of the return of hoops, and both teams played, I was able to sit down and watch both games in their entirety — and recap both.

I hope you enjoy!

Men’s hoops: WSU 100, Portland State 92

Quick Recap

Welcome back to our men’s hoops feature where we revisit the game from the night before to put it in a little bit of context. After game one of the David Riley era, one thing is for certain: These are definitely not Kyle Smith’s Cougs.

WSU hit triple digits in their season opener, scorching the nets from all over the floor while playing at a breakneck pace. If you didn’t get a chance to watch it — and it would be understandable if you did not, given the 8 p.m. PT tip and the broadcast on ESPN+ — you’d probably think the Cougs cruised against an obviously overmatched opponent. You’d be wrong!

Dane Erikstrup scored the first bucket of the game in exceedingly easy fashion, which would be a harbinger of things to come … but not before the Vikings went on a 21-2 run over the next five minutes as they seemed to hit every 3-point shot while the Cougars bungled their way around the floor with turnover after turnover. At one point, PSU had more offensive rebounds than WSU had shot attempts!

Once the Cougars stopped giving the ball away, their offensive talent took over. Down 21-4, WSU quickly closed the gap most of the way with a 10-0 run (keyed by a couple of Erikstrup 3s), Portland State ended its dry spell with a bucket, WSU went on another 7-0 run (keyed by five points from Nate Calmese) to close the gap to just two, and it was game on. Three minutes later it was tied; two minutes later WSU led by six and they’d never trail again.

Another Calmese 3-pointer completed a 42-17 scoring outburst over the final 14:26 of the half to send the Cougs into the locker room leading by eight. Crisis averted?

Sort of. PSU got to within two over the first four minutes of the second half. But WSU responded once again, stretching the lead out to double digits over the next four minutes, more or less holding it there before pushing it all the way up to 17 points with a couple of minutes to go. Some excellent garbage time hustle by PSU allowed them to close the gap a little and get the final margin into single digits.

In A Minute

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: Cedric Coward with 23 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocks, 1 steal … and 4 turnovers (36 minutes).

• Key stats: WSU scored an excellent 1.23 points per possession while shooting 15-of-32 from beyond the arc … and also turning the ball over on a whopping 26% of its trips down the floor.

Three Thoughts

1. I hope you like points!

We knew Riley’s philosophy was more offensively oriented than his predecessor’s, but holy crap — from a style standpoint, this was about as jarring of a departure from Smith as there could possibly have been. The Cougs dropped 100 while flying up and down the floor to the tune of 81 possessions; only once did WSU top 80 possessions in Smith’s tenure, and they were most often below 70.¹ They played some really fun, fluid offensive basketball that featured the ball movement and shooting we expected to see. There also were a lot of turnovers, some of which is to be expected when you move the ball as much as the Cougars will, but a lot of it was just being sloppy.

However, as if to really drive home the point that Smith is no longer in charge, they also gave up 92. Portland State did shoot really well at times, but mostly you can just chalk it up to poor defense — folks were often out of position, repeatedly losing shooters and getting beat off the dribble. The Vikings scored 1.14 points per possession, a number that is not horrible devoid of context, but there’s an important piece of context: PSU is projected to be in the bottom quartile of Division 1 teams, and BartTorvik.com adjusted the defensive performance to being comparable to giving up 1.23 ppp to an average team. Only once did WSU give up an adjusted mark that high last season.²  

But still: A point scored is basically the same as a point prevented, so how much you buy into this new approach is going to depend largely on your own personal aesthetic preferences. I think it’s also worth remembering that under Smith, the defense usually came out on point while the offense took about a month or so to sort itself out. Here’s to hoping this is just the inverse of that and that the defense will ramp up to speed.