Even Fontaine Thinks It Was Simply A Great Win For WSU

The tributes were simple and unpretentious, in the Ike Fontaine vein:

Three white T-shirts reading “I-K-E” across the front in Magic Marker, the frat-rat models too bashful (or - you don’t think? - decent) to bare their chests for the sake of calligraphy.

A homemade “Ike-O-Meter” scrawled on newsprint, with tear-away sheets counting down the points to the Washington State University scoring record.

A standing ovation which lasted two full cycles of the shot clock, and resumed at the next timeout.

That was pretty much the extent of it. Fontaine got his record and the Friel Court congregation of 7,335 conferred its love and, in retrospect, it turned out to be the least important development on an afternoon of brilliant basketball.

It came in a good length behind Cal’s Ed Gray going off for a Friel record 48 points, which in turn came in behind Ed Gray scoring 38 of those points in 17 minutes and 41 seconds of the second half, which in turn trailed Ed Gray getting carted off to Pullman Memorial Hospital with a broken foot after the game. Cal’s notions of making any noise in the postseason probably went along with him.

Footnotes, all of them - no pun intended.

Simply, the Cougars’ 89-87 upset of the 25th-ranked Bears on Saturday was precisely what Isaac Fontaine had been dreaming of - and it had next to nothing to do with passing Steve Puidokas on some dusty list.

“This,” he said, “got the monkey off our backs.”

He wasn’t necessarily just talking about the Cougs’ latest losing streak, which had reached five games and threatened to stretch into next season. He may well have been talking about the whole rap on this year’s Cougars.

It’s something like this: Some years back in Spokane, a radio station tried to generate hype over a format change by playing nothing but “Louie Louie” for an entire weekend. It was your “All-Louie Louie” station, the promos trumpeted.

All-Louie. All the time.

Well, the Cougars of ‘97 have pretty much been your All-Isaac Fontaine station. Sure, Carlos Daniel has nine double-doubles, but the cruel truth was that Wazzu had one weapon. And in the gut of the game, it was going to be All-Ike.

All the time.

Actually, it went deeper than that - to the fact that after the UCLA game on March 8, Fontaine would be history. And that the future - as constituted by freshmen Beau Archibald, Chris Crosby and Blake Pengelly - looked, well, from the early returns not too damn good.

So it was no surprise that, with 16 points, Fontaine shot the Cougars into a 46-41 halftime lead. It was even less of a surprise that the mercurial Gray, saddled with foul trouble and limited to 8 minutes in the first half, would singlehandedly shoot Cal back into it.

“The guy’s a time bomb,” explained Pengelly.

No, the surprise came when Fontaine picked up fouls No. 3 and 4 in the first 4 minutes of the second half - after the third walking the length of the court with his chin nailed to his chest and hands behind his back like a pre-schooler sent to the corner. For nearly 7 minutes, Fontaine sat - and returned not to find the Cougs in a hopeless hole, but still even.

“It was nerve-wracking at first,” he admitted, “but Chris and Blake stepped up and when I came back in, I was relaxed. I didn’t have to make something happen right away.”

Of course, it was all the three of them combined could do to keep pace with Gray, whose zone was somewhere out there beyond twilight. He tortured Crosby - in a stretch of 10 minutes making 21 of 23 shots, including free throws - before Cougar coach Kevin Eastman tried Kareem Jackson instead and Gray tired enough to miss a few.

“He’s been doing that a while - I’ve played in summer camps with him since high school,” Fontaine said. “I was thinking about it (being a shootout), but I couldn’t keep up with him tonight.”

The point is, he didn’t have to. Crosby and Pengelly were there with career-highs - 18 and 14 points, respectively - and Daniel added another 16, including the game-winner off a nervy drive by Pengelly.

“Finally, Ike got some support,” said Crosby, “and I think we showed people we could play in this league.”

Needing just nine points - “and he never gets less than nine,” Pengelly pointed out - for the school scoring record, Fontaine had 26.

Only 22 short of being the game’s top scorer.

“But he got the loss,” Fontaine said of Gray. “I’ll substitute that.

“I was nervous all weekend because my father and people expected me to break the record and I felt if I didn’t do it, it would be disappointing people.”

He has rarely done that, not since his first Cougar basket - which, being 1,912 points ago, he can’t remember.

“But I remember my first Pac-10 point,” he said. “It was against Cal. Yogi Stewart blocked my shot and they called goaltending. It was actually a block, but they gave it to me.”

This year, they’ve given him nothing. Until Saturday.

“Winning this game makes it mean more to him, but it means more to us, too,” said Crosby. “Especially the younger guys. He’s done so much for us that he deserves something like this. I think the fact that we all helped him win one today makes it a great day for him.”

Not just All-Ike, but for all-time. , DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review