WSU’s Bone looks ahead to weekend
COUGARS
Just got done with Washington State coach Ken Bone's weekly news conference. We have some notes on the link, so read on.
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• The number of people on the conference call was four or five, but we'll call it 4,134 because we get to count the season-ticket holders. ... The word of the day for Bone was consistency. That's what he looking for this weekend from his team as the Cougars travel to the Bay Area. That wasn't the case at the end of the recently completed road trip when WSU struggled after halftime to Butler, Baylor and UCLA. ... He expects to see good, solid basketball from Cal and from Stanford. Nothing fancy, nothing out-of-the-ordinary like Oregon State and, to a lesser degree, Oregon. Just physical, sound basketball. He mentioned Harper Kamp, Jorge Guiterrez and Markuri Sanders-Frieson – calling the last "the big fella in the middle" –as guys who are playing well for the Bears. ... Heck, instead of going through all of it, you can watch the highlights from Jared Prengruber in WSU's video department (see below). But there is one of his answers I want to address. He agreed with a question about the confidence WSU was playing with in, say, the Gonzaga game, and how it seemed to disappear in Los Angeles. Bone wants it back, of course, and thinks last week's double-digit wins may have helped with that some. But I believe Butler took something out of them the way the Bulldogs carved up the defense in the second half. It will take a road win or two – maybe this weekend – to get the tank all they way back to full.
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• That's it for now. We'll be back in the morning for sure and earlier if needed. Until then ...
