WSU hopes to add to Cal’s woes
Cougars look for first road victory over Bears since ’08
BERKELEY, Calif. – The Washington State men’s basketball team hasn’t had a great deal of success at Haas Pavilion in recent years. The Cougars haven’t left California’s gym with a win since the 2008 season.
But plenty of opponents have left Berkeley victorious this season.
That’s a trend WSU hopes to continue today, when the Cougars finish their season’s first Pac-12 road trip with a 1 p.m. game against the Golden Bears.
Cal (9-6, 1-2 Pac-12) has lost six of its last nine games, with four of those losses coming in Haas Pavilion. The most recent was a 62-47 drubbing against Washington on Wednesday, after which Cal forward David Kravish said the Bears “played with no heart, no passion.”
That hasn’t been a problem for the Cougars (9-6, 0-2 Pac-12), though they are still searching for their first road win of the season. They led late in the second half against Stanford on Wednesday before going cold down the stretch and falling 78-67.
WSU has led in the final six minutes in five of its six losses this season, including three of its four losses on the road or on neutral courts.
Shaking that trend must begin on the defensive end.
“I feel like it just comes down to stops,” WSU guard Royce Woolridge said. “We just need to start getting stops in crunch time. We’ve got to keep going to practice and keep working, keep grinding. We’ll be all right. It just comes down to stops.”