Yesterday, the Cougars trounced San Jose State, 82-53.

Our story from the game can be read here.

Our follow-up post is after the jump.

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-- Yesterday's easy win was a breath of fresh air for the Cougars, who had only played two games since Dec. 6 and lost them both. The blowout was a chance to head into winter break on a high note, and a chance for Ernie Kent to get one more look at his bench before likely tightening the rotation in Pac-12 play.

One player who appears to be earning himself some conference minutes is freshman guard Trevor Dunbar. It's taken Dunbar a little longer to get comfortable on a college basketball court than his roommate, starting point guard Ny Redding, but he's had a good December.

His 30 minutes yesterday were second to only Josh Hawkinson (more on him in a bit) and while five points and three assists in that time may not seem like much, Dunbar did a good job keeping the ball moving and facilitating the offense. He's also got one of the best crossovers on the team, already.

"He's playing well right now," Kent said. "He started to play well about three weeks ago so I'm glad he had this type of a game to gain some confidence and if he can come back from the break and continue to play with that confidence, that's a big plus for us."

-- The Cougars will take a short break to head to their respective homes before returning for Sunday's game against  UC Davis.

"I'm going to spend a lot of time with my kids," Kent said. "I need to do that but at some point in time we will be back watching film. I'm traveling back here on Christmas Day if that's an indication of what goes on for us coaches."

-- Another day, another double-double for Hawkinson, who is arguably shooting the ball better than anyone on the team, even from the outside. He made 1 of 2 attempted 3-pointers yesterday and takes more shots facing the basket than with his back to it.

Heading into the season it was a mystery how WSU would replace D.J. Shelton's production on offense and rebounding and Hawkinson has done that by himself. However, the Cougars pretty much need at least a baseline 15 and 10 or so from him every game or it could get ugly.

And he realizes that.

"Yeah, pretty much, that’s the goal going into every game to get 10 points, 10 rebounds, try to get that double-double," Hawkinson said.

The fact that he's able to do it without the Cougars force-feeding him is particularly impressive. Kent said after the game that they don't run specific plays to get Hawkinson the ball, although he later acknowledged that against Gonzaga the team ran specific sets to get Hawkinson open 3-point looks.

NOTES:

-- Hawkinson had double-digit rebounds for the seventh time this season.

-- The Cougars shot .824 from the free throw line, their second best mark this season.

-- DaVonte Lacy's 3-pointer gave him 209 for his career and moved him into sixth place on WSU's career 3-point list.

QUOTES:

KENT

(As a coach do you worry about your team getting much benefit from a game like that?)

No, because sometimes when you're walking wounded like that you play at a different level and I thought they played well. When you only have seven guys you know you're going to play, so you know you can get your shots up. The challenge for us wasn't so much about San Jose State as it was about us. This was our Christmas game to each other and we wanted to get out of here feeling good about ourselves and make sure we had a great Christmas so we wanted to play hard in the game (and) we got that accomplished. We wanted to get everybody in the game, we got that accomplished, too and we wanted to play smart and play well and I thought we did those things.

So everything we needed to do in terms of what we wanted out of the game, not so much about who you were playing but what we wanted out of it, we were able to do that.

(Are you telling players individually what they can use this as an opportunity to work on?)

No, I think for me, you talk about confidence in young people. My conversations are along the lines of "play with confidence" because I thought, particularly in Dex's case, he had a lot of opportunities in the first half and didn't capitalize on them. He did down the stretch.

You look at guys like Trevor Dunbar and Jordan Railey, I thought they played well in the game. Que Johnson played well in the game. In the heat of the battle they did a nice job. My conversations are more along those lines, "You're doing a nice job." "You're playing well." "Continue to do what you're doing." And then we tried to get some calls for Jordan, went at him to give him some confidence and some points and things like that.

It's more about confidence when you see those sidebar conversations going on the floor with those guys.

(What does Josh need to improve on before he goes up against Pac-12 posts?)

If anything it's his defense in terms of defending the drive because there are going to be games where we have to switch and he's going to get stuck on a smaller player, maybe at the end of a shot clock. I think teams have kind of picked on him when we're switching early on. Outside of that, and this may amaze you, we don't run plays for Josh. That's 17 shots he had in that game, in others he's had 18 shots, he really fits our style of play and what we do in our system because he really has a tremendous feel for the game. So his shots come just from finding out the open areas on the floor and our guys are doing a good job finding him. It's almost like you're running a play but you don't have to call his number because he has tremendous feel, so he gets a lot of shots up. He did not have one single bad shot tonight. He had another game where he had 18 shots and took one bad shot. That's tremendous productivity out of the four spot for a guy that I think is just getting better. Every day in practice and every game I think he gets a little bit better.

(Do more passes indicate that the players are getting more comfortable in the offense?)

It indicates that it is. And again, this level of opponent, not disrespecting them, understanding that if you have an opportunity to move the ball like that your confidence comes, you see things better. When we opened up the season at TCU and UTEP those passing lanes were closing up quick with those athletes out on the floor. Yes, it is an indication things are getting better but Trevor Dunbar had a lot to do with that. He has tremendous vision on the floor and I thought he gave a lot of opportunities to guys to score easy buckets out on the floor when he was in the game.

JOSH HAWKINSON

(What do you need to work on?)

I think I definitely need to step up my defense, especially when I switch onto the guards that are quicker and work on my lateral quickness, staying a little bit lower so they can’t drive me and get easy buckets through that.

TREVOR DUNBAR

(What's the transition from being a star in high school to a lesser role in college like?)

It’s pretty hard but every day I’m in practice working hard, even when we’re done with practice, I’m in there getting shots up and I’m constantly working hard at practice and trying to prove to coach that I’m capable of getting good minutes on this team and I think I kind of showed that the last couple of weeks in practice and tonight as well.

(How does a game like this help?)

It kind of increases my confidence, so going into next game knowing I did pretty well passing the ball, facilitating, all of that, it’s going to just give me confidence going into next game and I’ve got to do the same thing, maybe more.

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