Cougars impressive ride continues

There seems to be some worries out there among Cougars fans that their beloved team still isn’t a lock to make the NCAA tournament.

Quit worrying.

Unless they totally implode down the stretch – and they won’t; they play too well on the defensive end for that to happen – they are in the field of 65.

So is Gonzaga, but that’s another column for another day.

Today we are trying to alleviate the concerns of those Cougars fans who expect their team to “Coug” the final seven regular-season games and in the Pac-10 tournament.

They won’t. And they will be playing in March in the four-letter tourney, not the three-letter one.

Why. Because the numbers tell us so. And numbers beyond their 19-4 overall mark and 8-3 Pac-10 record.

The Cougars are 17th in scoring defense in the most recent NCAA Division I statistics, which were through games of Feb. 4.

Only 16 teams in the nation yield less points per game than they do.

Sure, you can say one of the main reasons they are giving up just 58.7 points per game is due to their patient offense – less possessions per game mean less points are scored for both teams.

But that would be ignoring two other crucial statistics. WSU’s field goal percentage defense – what other teams shoot against their defense – is 39th in the nation (40.2 percent).

And the Cougars don’t give opponents a lot of extra chances. Though they are being outrebounded by almost three a game, they turn over the ball hardly at all.

Their average of 10.3 turnovers a game is second in the nation, trailing only Butler’s 9.6 mark.

How important is that number? Well none of the top 14 teams in turnovers per game have a losing record. There is no other statistic the NCAA keeps that can equal that.

Some of the teams in the top 10 have even more impressive records than WSU, including Butler’s 22-2, Air Force’s 20-3 and Wisconsin’s 22-2 marks.

So don’t expect the Cougars to collapse down the stretch.

But you’re still worried because, you wonder, what if they wane a little?

They’re still in.

Right now WSU’s RPI is, according to kenpom.com, 32nd in the nation and rising.

Part of the rise can be attributed to the Pac-10 schedule. And that will help down the stretch.

No matter how the Cougars do against the four high-RPI teams left on their schedule (Stanford, Oregon, USC and UCLA), as long as they can win two of three from California, Washington or Oregon State, their RPI should stay decent.

Yes, their non-conference schedule was weak – ranked 298th in the nation according to Pomeroy’s website, with only Gonzaga and San Diego State currently in the RPI top 100 – but the Pac-10 gantlet more than makes up for that.

Thanks to the Pac-10 – and the Gonzaga win – the Cougars are 4-3 against top-50 schools and 8-3 against the top 100. Their only bad loss was to Utah, and as the season wears on it seems more and more inexplicable.

So even a 3-5 finish – a worse-case scenario, with wins over the three weaker schools and losses to the rest, including in the Pac-10 tourney first round – still shouldn’t keep them out.

They would be 22-9, with an 11-7 finish in one of the nation’s top three conferences. Sure the seed might not be as high as you would like, but they would be on the dance floor.

Then you can start worrying.