WSU’s waters aren’t quite uncharted

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Not to poke a hole in the bottom of the boat, but these uncharted waters the Washington State Cougars are sailing? Well, they’ve been charted.

Precisely, in fact.

No, not by the Cougars themselves, or any Cougars since World War II. Since there had to be 16 teams in the NCAA tournament before there could be a Sweet 16, this qualifies as a precedent – but these Cougs are too much fun to get bogged down in historical technicalities.

Still, there is an echo here.

The Cougars attempt to puncture the improbable on Thursday when they play top-ranked North Carolina in the East Regional semifinals, a feat that would put them 40 minutes from the Final Four – last achieved by a WSU team in 1941.

But the real reference point is much more recent.

In 2000, a basketball contractor of some regional renown reached the Final Four with an eighth-seeded team built around exacting defensive principles and a single, character-driven recruiting class that endured some of the hardest knocks the college game could throw at it.

Dick Bennett was the coach at Wisconsin then – and the godfather of Washington State’s ongoing phenomenon now.

“They’re in a different spot,” noted Mark Vershaw, who follows the Cougars from afar in his post as basketball coach at Monmouth College in Illinois, “but the similarities are unmistakable.”

Vershaw was the leading scorer on that 2000 Wisconsin team which beat Fresno State, Arizona, LSU and Purdue before losing to Michigan State in the national semifinals. He was also a volunteer assistant coach at WSU for two seasons before Bennett handed the car keys over to his son, Tony.

And while Tony Bennett noted this week that “nobody’s giving us much of a chance” of beating the Tar Heels, he is obviously in possession of the blueprint.

In fact, what his father’s 2000 Badgers pulled off was even more improbable – comical, to a point.

Being an eighth seed, the Badgers faced their top-seeded moment of truth a round earlier than these Cougars.

“I just remember the (Arizona) lineup from that time – Gilbert Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Luke Walton,” Vershaw said. “That’s similar to what (the Cougars) are going to face in Charlotte. It was a game we look back on and laugh at, the matchups that were out on the floor. Now those guys are in the NBA and we’re here shaking our heads.”

Each of those Wisconsin games in the 2000 tournament was in the 60-something-to-50-something category, until the Badgers fell 53-41 in the semis. There was much national gnashing of teeth when the halftime score of that one was 19-17 and Bennett was accused of taking college basketball back to the Brick Age.

It was unfair and, frankly, stupid, since the point is to win.

Yes, his son has tweaked the model and the Cougars are a more efficient, productive offensive team. But they also held their two tournament opponents last week to 81 total points, and that statistic alone suggests it’s not preposterous that they might beat Carolina.

“His whole deal,” Tony said of the basics he cribbed from his father, “is playing in a way that gives you a chance to beat the best – playing a style and a system that gives you a chance.”

And with players who believe in that way.

For the Cougars, they’re the heart and soul of the 2004 recruiting class that included Robbie Cowgill, Daven Harmeling, Derrick Low and Kyle Weaver. Bennett senior found a similar group in Wisconsin in Vershaw, Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske, Maurice Linton and Charlie Wills.

Unlike the WSU group, those Badgers recruits were highly regarded. One analyst ranked it the 13th best class in the country, and Vershaw was a Top 50 player. On the other hand, in that 2000 season none of them was given so much as honorable mention All-Big Ten, while both Low and Weaver have become all-league players.

But the destination was pretty much the same.

“They said next to Northwestern, (Wisconsin) was the graveyard of the Big Ten – that you’re going to go there and die and not win anything,” Vershaw told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in 2000.

The Badgers arrived a year earlier – Vershaw’s classmates were juniors during the Final Four run. But they’d been 3-13 and last in the Big Ten as freshman, just as the Cougs finished last in the Pac-10 two years ago.

Vershaw noted that the Cougars must play Carolina “in what amounts to a home game, but they’re a team that doesn’t turn it over which can counter that. They have the ability to score more points than we did, too, so in that regard they can win a game in the 70s. And they’ve been through it all.”

Except, of course, this – another thing these Cougs share with those Badgers.

“No one knew who the heck we were when we made our run,” Vershaw laughed. “You should have seen the media scramble when we won.”