Cougars win one for road

LOS ANGELES – This could have been another brutally difficult Pac-10 loss for Washington State. In fact, it’s possible that it should have been another hard-fought, narrow defeat.

But Kyle Weaver wasn’t going to let it happen.

“I wasn’t going back to Pullman without at least one win,” the junior said.

And so, after USC’s Gabe Pruitt hit an off-balance 3-pointer to send the Galen Center crowd into a frenzy with 9.1 seconds left Saturday, Weaver took off downcourt. The Cougars got the ball inbounds to Derrick Low, who found Weaver streaking up the right wing. A quick pass to Weaver, and the lanky guard charged ahead, where he made a tough, 8-foot runner to give WSU a one-point lead with 4 seconds left.

That wasn’t enough, though. Weaver drew a charge at midcourt going the other way with 1.4 seconds on the clock, simultaneously fouling USC star Nick Young out of the game and all but sealing the win. A pair of Robbie Cowgill free throws with less than 1 second remaining gave the visiting Cougars a 58-55 win, plus a split in Southern California after a three-point loss to No. 1 UCLA Thursday night.

“First I was thinking, ‘Oh, no. Here we go again,’ ” said Cowgill, hearkening back to the Cougars’ many close defeats in recent seasons. “Kyle makes those kinds of plays all the time where he gets going in transition to do stuff like that. Man, what a big-time play by him.”

The win puts WSU at 12-2 overall and 1-1 in the conference, and should give it some significant momentum heading back home for the Pac-10 home openers against Arizona State and Arizona next week.

The last-second heroics aside, the Cougars needed a methodical second-half comeback to give themselves a chance after trailing 38-27 with less than 12 minutes to play. Maybe it was a sign that USC is and always has been a football school, but at that point football coach Pete Carroll appeared on the JumboTron to loud cheers. The Trojans (11-3, 1-1) promptly allowed WSU to outscore them 23-11 in the following stretch, leading to the tight finish.

“Sometimes you just need a few guys to take the lid off the basket, and once we did we got some good shots,” said Cougars coach Tony Bennett, who picked up his first career Pac-10 win. “The last five minutes of the UCLA game, I thought we maybe made more poor decisions than good decisions. When this was crunch time, this game, we made more good decisions than poor ones.”

WSU got a lift from a number of its more experienced players, one of them being Daven Harmeling. The redshirt sophomore pulled out of a recent slump with two big 3-pointers late in the game, the first to give WSU a 47-46 lead and the second to snap a 50-all tie.

Just as significant, the Cougars found themselves forcing USC into a number of difficult shots late in the game. Young, who has torched the Cougars in previous matchups, led USC with just 14 points, and freshman power forward Taj Gibson was limited to 11. Weaver defended Young all night.

“I didn’t come out saying I didn’t want him to score at all,” Weaver said. “I knew he was going to hit a couple of buckets on me. He got in foul trouble and sat a little bit and I think that frustrated him a little bit. I gave it all I had and thought I did a decent job on him.”

Weaver scored 12 points along with Cowgill, and Low had 13 to lead the Cougars. But it will be Weaver’s final two points that will be remembered most from this game, ones that made the difference between a long trip home and a confidence-boosting victory.

“Especially after a game like UCLA, it hurt,” he said. “I couldn’t even sleep that night. Coming into this game, that’s all I could think about, giving it all I had.”

Notes

For a second time this week, an opposing coach declared that WSU was an NCAA tournament-worthy foe. Echoing UCLA’s Ben Howland, USC’s Tim Floyd said, “We felt like Washington State is as good as any team we’re playing in our first six Pac-10 games. … This is an NCAA tournament team.” … The Cougars turned the ball over just eight times. … This was the first game played in the new Galen Center with curtains shutting out the natural light that comes in from a number of large windows on the north end of the floor.

Washington St. 58, USC 55

Percentages: FG .404, FT .769. 3-Point Goals: 6-15, .400 (Harmeling 2-5, Low 2-5, Weaver 1-1, Rochestie 1-1, Cowgill 0-1, Koprivica 0-2). Team Rebounds: 1. Blocked Shots: 0. Turnovers: 8 (Weaver 4, Koprivica 2, Cowgill, Clark). Steals: 5 (Weaver 2, Harmeling, Low, Koprivica). Technical Fouls: None.

Percentages: FG .465, FT .733. 3-Point Goals: 4-15, .267 (Stewart 2-6, Lewis 1-3, Pruitt 1-4, Young 0-1, Hackett 0-1). Team Rebounds: 3. Blocked Shots: 5 (Gibson 2, Pruitt 2, Wilkinson). Turnovers: 14 (Young 5, Gibson 3, Wilkinson 3, Pruitt 2, TEAM). Steals: 3 (Stewart 2, Lewis). Technical Fouls: None.

Halftime–USC 25, Washington State 21. A–5,924.