Bone: Cougs not far away
PULLMAN – It’s never happened to him before, and Ken Bone doesn’t like it.
“It hurts to look at the standings and see we finished 10th,” Washington State University’s first-year men’s basketball coach said Monday. “I’ll admit that. That stings me a little bit, being the head coach of a team that finishes in last place.”
But there is an “on the other hand” to his comment.
“It just doesn’t seem like we were that far off,” he said. “We win two more games – and there were at least a couple games we definitely could have won – and now, all of a sudden, we finish in the middle of the pack.”
The Cougars’ season, Bone’s first after replacing Tony Bennett last April, wasn’t as successful as he wanted. After all, in Bone’s first two head coaching stops – Seattle Pacific and Portland State – he’s never finished lower than fifth in the conference standings and only once has a Bone-coached team finished under .500 overall.
That number is still one, as WSU’s season finished 16-15, despite a 6-12 Pac-10 mark. The Cougars, featuring one of the youngest teams in the nation, started 12-3, with one of those defeats a controversial overtime decision to Oregon.
But they also finished 2-10, leading Bone to pull the plug, joining Arizona and UCLA in declining to pursue a CBI postseason berth.
With the Cougars losing just one senior, forward Nik Koprivica, a scholarship must open before the next school year.
“I don’t foresee that being an issue,” Bone said. “There were some kids who were ready to leave last year if there had not been a coaching change. It happens every year at a lot of programs.”
Bone admits some players are probably thinking they need to talk with him about playing time and, if the answer isn’t what they want to hear, they’ll want to transfer. But he also said no one has hinted at it yet.
Bone will hit the road recruiting, visiting junior college signee Faisal Aden in Florida before returning home. Two other assistants will be out as well. One area they’re looking to improve down the road is foot speed.
“There are times in the course of a game (that) if they could just get to a ball quicker, get to a shooter quicker, get to a rebound quicker,” it would help, he said.
Aden, who finished seventh nationally in scoring, averaging 23 points per game for Hillsborough CC, should help there. And Ephrata High’s Patrick Simon, the 6-foot-9 forward who set a State 2A tournament record with 48 points in a semifinal, should help with size and shooting.
Of Aden, Bone says, “I would think he would (challenge for a starting spot) but that’s kind of up to the guys coming back.”
And it’s those returning players who will have the biggest impact on next year, with players like Marcus Capers and Brock Motum expected to carry a bigger load.
One area everyone will be expected to improve is strength.
“As we went out on the floor against other teams, it was obvious right at the opening tip. You see our bodies and other team’s bodies and ours were not the same,” said Bone.
Strength not only will help the Cougars inside but may help them cope with late-season fatigue, which may have played a role in the stretch-run fade.
Leading scorer Klay Thompson and freshman point guard Reggie Moore both struggled with their shot in Pac-10 play, with Thompson missing 24 consecutive shots at one point and Moore converting just 18 of 65 in the final nine games.
Still, Thompson, who averaged 19.6 points per game, fourth-best in WSU history, moved into the school’s top 10 in five career offensive categories despite having played just two seasons.
And Moore set freshmen records for assists (131), assists average (4.2), free throw percentage (79.4) and free throws made (154).
Inside, sophomore DeAngelo Casto moved into sixth-place all-time at WSU in blocked shots, having swatted 106 in two seasons. James Donaldson holds the school record with 176.
With that foundation, Bone can look at the conference standings and see one thing.
“I just don’t feel like we’re too far away,” he said.