The game that was: Washington 59, WSU 55

COUGARS

FROM PULLMAN — We have our postgame overview of Washington State’s tough 59-55 loss here to Washington. Read on.

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PLAYER OF THE GAME — Hard to call someone the player of the game when they shoot 6 of 18 from the floor, but Tony Wroten stands out on a night when few others did. He scored 21 points and made 9-12 from the free throw line, and added six rebounds and five assists (and four turnovers). Marcus Capers deserves recognition for his season-high 14 points, six rebounds and five assists. And Abe Lodwick played well in his final game at Beasley, scoring eight points and grabbing nine rebounds.

PLAY OF THE GAME — If only because it’ll be talked about so much, we’ll go with Patrick Simon’s missed 3-pointer with the Cougars trailing 57-55. Ken Bone stood by his decision to sub Simon in and design a play that had  him as one of the primary options. Brock Motum supported the decision, too. Simon is a very good shooter, but Bone did concede that he is partially at fault for putting him in the game cold.

KEY STAT — You know about the free throw issues, and we wrote about that in our game story. So we’ll point to something else — the rebounding margin. WSU outrebounded UW 42-35, a surprising number considering the way the Huskies dominated them on the glass in Seattle. Washington had 22 offensive boards in that game. Tonight, they had just nine.

QUOTABLE — “This game, it’s not a death sentence for us. We understand where we are in the Pac-12. We also understand that we have two games left in conference, so we want to finish out strong. We want to do whatever we can do to make a lot of noise in this conference tournament. We still are a confident team, we’re a team that are playing these teams tough, well enough to win. There’s just certain things, if something goes right here or there … we’re a tough ball club. I know we’re a team that scares other people. I wouldn’t want to play us in the conference tournament.” — Abe Lodwick

NEXT UP — Thursday at UCLA. The Bruins fell to Arizona, 65-63, on Saturday. They beat WSU 63-60 in Pullman on Feb. 4.

Christian Caple can be reached at christianc@spokesman.com . Twitter: @ChristianCaple