WSU 84, Fresno State 73: Quick Recap

The Cougars (now 6-1) took the floor at the “Acrisure Series” in the “Greater Palm Springs Area” minus their best player, Cedric Coward — who seems to have suffered a shoulder injury at practice this week — and it showed.

Against a team that a full-strength squad likely would have blown out, WSU mostly just kept the Bulldogs (3-3) at bay, neither running them off the floor nor ever really being threatened — both teams’ largest runs were just 9-0. A first half in which WSU was able to build only modest leads transitioned into the Cougars taking full control out of the break: Over the first 10 minutes, they outscored FSU by 13 to take a 16-point lead that never was threatened the rest of the way.

In the end, WSU led for nearly 38 minutes of game action, their win probability never dipped below 85%, and they closed out a double-digit victory despite not scoring over the final two minutes.

The Cougs will play again tonight in the “championship” of this tournament, against fellow bubble aspirer SMU.

In A Minute

• Cougfan recap by friend of the pod Jamey Vinnick

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: Ethan Price with 16 points, 6 assists, 1 rebound, 1 block, 2 turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: After getting a little three happy early in the game — and missing almost all of them — WSU flexed its advantage in the paint to shoot 28-of-42 (67%) on 2s.

Highlights

Three Thoughts

1. First Thought

On the one hand, missing your best player and still winning by double digits is nice and shows that the talent that’s left is still a cut above a bad team like Fresno State (No. 263 kenpom). On the other hand … the Cougs as configured without Coward did not look like the sort of team that is good enough to be on the bubble come March.

Barttorvik.com actually puts a number on this with a Game Score: WSU’s 61 last night was its worst of the year by quite a bit, and it correlates as equivalent to the kind of performance you’d expect from a team ranked around 120 in his system, rather than the 80 where they were at tipoff. Honestly, that tracks with what it looked like to my eyes.

We don’t know how long Coward will be out. I don’t think anyone in the program even knows. But if it’s for more than these couple of games, that’s a huge, massive, enormous blow with the team facing maybe its most important stretch of the season, against a bunch of teams that figure to either be on the bubble or in the NCAAs (vs. SMU tonight, at Nevada on Monday, at Boise State next Saturday).

Coward just does so many things well on both ends of the floor, whether that’s as a dependable scorer at all three levels or as a defender with tremendous length on the perimeter. I won’t say he’s the one guy we can’t afford to lose — Nate Calmese might fit that role, with how the team looks at guard every time he comes off the floor — but he’s either 1a or 1b. And that really sucks for a team that has so much promise.

Let’s just hope for the best possible prognosis.

2. Wonky rotations

Between Coward’s injury and foul trouble by Calmese — he picked up his fourth personal foul when he was given a T for blowing a kiss to someone in the crowd — and ongoing injuries to backup point guard Marcus Wilson and wing Rihards Vavers, coach David Riley was pushed into some extremely … uh … interesting lineup combinations.

Isaiah Watts started in place of Coward, which is a logical move. But Watts — normally a microwave off the bench — struggled greatly in that kind of a role. He had difficulty with finding his shooting range (everyone did), but he also was counted on to man the point a bunch and struggled with decision making (also a bigger problem than him). The season-high 31 minutes at his normal frenetic pace with the added responsibilities seemed to sap his legs in the final five minutes.

Meanwhile, a couple of a 6-6 wings — Kase Wynott and Tomas Thrastarson — each cracked double digit minutes for the first time this season (14 and 10, respectively). Neither posed any kind of offensive threat, but neither were they liabilities. I was intrigued enough by what I saw that I’d like to see more of them, particularly of Wynott, but also: Both of them will need to be more aggressive offensively to justify their place in the rotation. They can’t just take up space in this offense, especially without Coward out there to press the issue.

More than anything, it felt like Riley was experimenting, trying to get a feel for what kind of combinations will work going forward while not really being threatened by the opponent. The biggest thing that would help — other than getting Coward back, of course — would be getting Wilson back. I don’t think anyone thought the freshman would be any kind of big contributor, but man: Without him, the ball handling load either shifts to Isaiah or LeJuan Watts or Parker Gerrits, who demonstrated again last night that he is not suited for this level of competition. Getting Wilson back means everyone can shift back into more comfy roles.

3. Turnovers … again

Riley’s history suggests his teams will always turn the ball over at a higher-than-average rate, and that’s something we all should be able to live with … provided the turnovers aren’t of the braindead variety, of which there were way, waaaaay too many last night. One astute poster in our Premium Member Slack noted that WSU is now ranked 343rd in non-steal turnover percentage, with 11% of their possessions ending with the ball going out of bounds or with a travel or with an offensive foul, etc.

It seems to me that about a third of those come from aggressive passes or drives, which are the price of doing business in this offense. But the other two thirds are just very dumb and careless. In theory, that means they should be able to be cleaned up and minimized, but who knows. They’ve survived it so far, but that won’t last forever.

Up Next: SMU Mustangs

SMU — which is now led by former USC coach Andy Enfield, a fact you might not have known or remembered — made it to the “championship” by beating Cal Baptist last night with a bucket in the final seconds. The Mustangs are, at this point, a pretty un-Enfield team, being very much offense forward so far.

This reared its head last night, when Cal Baptist erased an early-second-half 16-point deficit behind a 15-2 run to tie it up with 10 minutes to go. From there, it was a ton of back and forth until Kevin “Boopie” Miller hit this tough shot to win it:

Despite the Mustangs’ defense not being great overall, they do still bear the imprint of Enfield’s philosophy: Making 2s against them is real tough — they’re 32nd in 2-point% defense and block about 14% of 2s (55th nationally). We know the paint is where the Cougs like to do the bulk of their damage, so this is going to present an interesting challenge, especially if Coward is out again (which I would expect).

It’s easy to start to shy away from the paint when it gets tough, settling for the easier shot from behind the arc — especially since SMU seems to prefer giving those up. But WSU will need to stay aggressive: SMU is physical and they’ll foul you … if you continue to press the issue and force the refs to blow their whistles.

Don’t be surprised if you see a little more of ND Okafor in this one; if someone asked me for an “X” factor, he’d be it. He’ll help WSU with powering through the physicality by providing an edge for the Cougs on the glass: SMU is below average at defensive rebounding and very good at offensive rebounding, and Okafor will help with both. Additionally, SMU likes to attack the paint pretty relentlessly, and his shot-blocking presence could be a major boon.

Tipoff is another late one at 9 p.m. PT on TruTV.