No. 21 WSU 77, No. 4 Arizona 74: Quick Recap

Two hours after second place Washington State tipped off as a 13.5-point underdog to league leader Arizona, the Cougars walked out of McKale Center with a three-point victory and sole possession of first place in the Pac-12.

It was a back-and-forth affair befitting a heavyweight battle for supremacy in the final iteration of the west coast’s premier basketball conference, filled with everything you want in a great college basketball game: Lead changes, twists, turns, big shots, big errors … everything we love about this sport.

The Cougs held leads of 6, 6, 7, and 6 at various points in the game, while Arizona never led by more than four. Neither team would allow the other to seize control, and it was WSU that made the big plays down the stretch.

With 51 seconds to go and the game tied at 71, Arizona’s Caleb Love finished a layup while drawing a (questionable) foul on Rueben Chinyelu. His free throw was pure, and the Wildcats led by three. On the ensuing possession and needing a 3, Myles Rice — who played sparingly down the stretch — found a little space to squeeze off a shot. But unlike so many other times this season, it didn’t go in.

There was a scramble for the ball, as hands poked and prodded. Eventually Andrej Jakimovski emerged with the offensive rebound, finding Jaylen Wells in the corner for a 3-point look.

Money. And the foul!

The Cougs stood tall defensively on the next possession, first when Isaac Jones blocked Love’s driving shot out of bounds, then finally when Love drove into the trees and tried to jump stop, only to slip and turn the ball over with a travel. Two free throws by Wells later, Love was heaving up a desperation, turnaround 3 from near midcourt that was oddly close to going in, but didn’t, and the Wheatfield Underdogs emerged at the top of the Pac-12 standings.

In A Minute

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: Jaylen Wells with 27 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal in 39 minutes.

• Unsung hero: Rueben Chinyelu with 12 points, 11 rebounds, 1 assists, 1 block in 28 minutes.

• One stat to tell the tale: 1. As in, 1st place, all alone. As in, 1 team at the top of the standings. As in, “on track for the 1 seed in the Pac-12 tournament”:

Highlights

Tourney Check

Folks, we are getting in range of playing our first game(s) in Spokane:

Four Thoughts

(Because sometimes, Three Thoughts just isn’t enough!)

1. What it means

I have so many emotions bubbling in my head this morning. I’m going to guess you do too.

Being in first place this late in the season feels electric in and of itself, but it’s also impossible to ignore the context: this being the final Pac-12 season, Arizona being one of the two Basketball Giants in this conference for so many years and one of the defectors that left WSU behind.

To beat the Wildcats with that backdrop, and on their home floor — FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW¹ … it’s just so hard to describe how satisfying this is, emotionally.

On a practical level, here’s what it does: The Cougars now control their own path to the conference regular season championship (and No. 1 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament) with four games to play. They will be significant favorites in each one, with kenpom.com putting their odds at no less than 70% in any of the remaining games. Win them all, and the job is done — No. 1 seed, no worse than a share of the conference title. Lose one, and you’d need Arizona to lose one of their final five games.

Personally, I want to win out and have Arizona lose one so that we win the conference outright - no tiebreakers needed.

As for the NCAA tournament, I mentioned above that this means we’re moving toward playing Spokane. Seeds on the first four lines are more or less guaranteed to be placed at the regional site nearest their campus, and for WSU, that’s obviously Spokane — where Idaho is technically the host.²

I honestly am not sure what WSU would have to do to get up to a No. 4 seed. “Keep winning” is the obvious answer, but I’m not sure if it’s going to require winning out, or if there’s wiggle room. I suspect we’ll have a little better sense once folks update their brackets and we see how far up the Cougs move in the Bracket Matrix after this win.

But the fact that it’s even on the table is mind blowing.

2. Jaylen Wells is That Dude

I’ve got a post in the works to try and contextualize what Wells is doing this year as a Division II uptransfer, but for now, I just want to talk about what he did last night.