COUGARS

Washington State opens the Diamond Head Classic – see the link for one coach's definition of a "classic" – tomorrow against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs will be missing a couple of players. Read on for our advance.

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• We put together this advance after talking with Klay Thompson today. He was in a hurry to hit the town as the Cougars had a couple of free hours before lunch. But I talked with him about the last meeting with Mississippi State, played in Newark a couple of years ago before myself and about three hundred basketball junkies. In the second half of that game, Aron Baynes was floating a bit, not attacking the Bulldogs' Jarvis Varnado, a rail-thin shot blocker. Thompson, who has a freshman wouldn't say marbles if he had a mouthful (one of my father's old sayings cleaned up for our all-ages audience), came down on one possession and started yelling at the 280-pound Aussie center to get his backside down to the block and attack Varnado. Shocked me, shocked Taylor Rochestie, who joked about it after the game, and shocked Baynes a bit I'm sure. Baynes got his backside down to the block, overpowered Varnado and scored. Thompson said today he didn't remember it. ... Anyhow, we have our advance and we'll be covering the game tomorrow off the ESPNU feed. ... As for a "classic," former WSU coach George Raveling said once a classic is when a coach invites to a tournament three teams he knows he can beat. Classic line. ...

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That's all for tonight. By the way, went through my last treatment today and actually got out and about tonight. It's time for us to get back to work, though we won't know if the treatments worked for a few weeks. ... We'll be back before the game tomorrow. Until then ...

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