Bennett gets into practice as head coach

PULLMAN – Before taking the floor for his first official practice as a head coach, Tony Bennett wanted to make sure a couple of people knew how much they had helped him.

“I called my dad before,” Bennett said. “I called my high school coach and told them, ‘Hey, I want to thank you for giving to me and having the influence you’ve had on my basketball career.’ ”

Bennett, 37, has taken the reins of the Washington State basketball program from his father, Dick, who retired at the conclusion of last season.

The younger Bennett has a difficult job ahead of him, taking a team onto the floor Friday night for its first full practice coming off of an 11-17 season that landed them in the Pac-10 cellar.

Bennett does have the advantage of returning almost the entire roster from last spring, and the core players on his team are now juniors.

“We’re working hard and keeping each other accountable,” said forward Robbie Cowgill, one of those juniors. “Tony’s just brought this positive attitude and kind of a confidence that we are going to turn things around, and this year.”

The new head coach is certainly different on the practice floor than his father, setting a more collegial tone.

But Bennett showed that in many ways, he’s a mirror image of the old one. Bennett spent his first practice working largely on defense, emphasizing the simplest of defensive stances and techniques.

“The initial, first couple of weeks is really about building our identity defensively and instilling the things that matter to us: soundness with the ball, hard-nosed defense,” Bennett said. “These guys have a very good idea, most of them are returners, of what the whole looks like, what the big picture is offensively and defensively is. Our job early is to go and break it back down to the basics.”

WSU has been practicing in short team segments for a month, but the level of intensity rose significantly with the first full practice and a regular-season game now less than a month away.

“Guys have been working really hard in the off-season,” Cowgill said. “We just can’t wait to get this thing started.”

The first-year head coach couldn’t agree more.

“(It’s) another step,” Bennett said. “Playing in a game will be another step. The best advice I ever got, it’s what I did as a player and it’s what I’ll do as a coach, is to just concentrate on the process. I’m not going to go, ‘Oh, wow, it’s my first practice as an official head coach. It’s my first game.’ Let’s just get these guys where they need to be so we have a chance to turn this program around.”