To progress, Cougs can’t ignore loss

PULLMAN – In the last episode of Baby Steps Toward a Basketball Renaissance, Dexter Kernich-Drew had just gutted Arizona State with an implausible shot and delirium ruled at Friel Court.

Washington State had taken down the team that had taken down Arizona, the most gifted collaboration this side of Kentucky, and the extrapolation made anything possible. But rather than get swept away on this endorphin wave, Cougars coach Ernie Kent dog-paddled for a brief moment.

“Happy with the win,” he said Friday night, “but I look forward to the day where we don’t think any win is a great win.”

He probably meant “just any win,” as in a win over ASU, which is keeping the Cougs company on the backside of Pac-12 Mountain at the moment.

So on Sunday came a chance to grapple with the flipside of Kent’s very worthy proposition.

The Cougs stepped out against the team beaten by the team they’d just beaten in front of an audience swelled to a season-high 5,331 by the guests’ reputation, two-for-one admission and a T-shirt giveaway.

And then they got stepped on. Er, stomped on.

The remarkable part of Arizona’s 86-59 blitz is that it was even worse at halftime, the Cougars down 53-19. When Que Johnson knocked down a jump shot after Wazzu had gone more than eight minutes without, so startling was it to hear that trademark Cougar snarl piped over the public address that for a second it seemed more likely that a live animal had wandered into the building.

This was no game. This was a sketch pilfered from the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary show.

Just not sure if it was Debbie Downer or Sweet Sassy Molassy.

The Cougars didn’t just miss shots – they missed 2-inchers by 2 feet. They’d miss a 3-pointer, manage to get the rebound – quite a feat, in that they were thundered 30-9 on the boards that first half – and then airball the follow-up 3. After the misses, it was a cornucopia of surrender: Arizona dunk, Arizona jumper, Wazzu foul, Arizona layup, Arizona 3.

When the Wildcats’ Rondae Hollis-Jefferson beat the halftime horn with a shot that had to travel from behind and over the backboard to find net, most of the students who had shown up for the “gray-out” shirt promotion took their gray, out. And never came back.

“I think my fourth year at Oregon we caught Arizona with Lute (Olson) and they had us down 40,” Kent remembered. “And what it did for me, very similar to this, is it gave me the barometer. I remember telling my staff, ‘This is where we need to get to.’ ”

The next year, Kent’s Ducks won the conference title and reached the Elite Eight.

The Cougs’ mileage may vary. OK, let’s go with something stronger than “may.”

The successes in his first season that Kent would prefer not to get too wound up about have been encouraging nonetheless – the two road wins in January over Cal and Washington back when the Huskies still cared, the OT thriller over Oregon, the shocker over Stanford. Certainly they are more than almost everyone outside the program expected, and the strides Kent has made jury-rigging confidence and goosing even fitful production out of players long-ago written off – Kernich-Drew being the latest – suggests happier days.

But confidence tends to be predicated on performance, especially in Wazzu’s case. Against Oregon and Stanford, the Cougs shot it like crazy; this night, not. And they’ll never be able to fall back on getting stops.

“We know our defense is not where it needs to be and hasn’t been all year,” Kent admitted.

Well, at least it’s a year-round thing down here.

That the Cougs bounced back a bit in the second half is fine and all, but Arizona coach Sean Miller noted that “on offense, when there’s no pressure anymore, 3s start going in.” Even Kent called Miller “classy” for easing off the throttle.

“They stopped running and attacking so they gave us an opportunity to make some buckets,” he said.

So he’s not putting much stock in Wazzu’s second-half resiliency. He’s also not spending much time with this one, offering that, “You just move the game.”

Except that if Kent looks forward to the day that not just any win is cause for riotous celebration, so should the Cougs not be comfortable shrugging off a drubbing by an obviously superior opponent.

They’re supposed to compete. When the game was in doubt Sunday, they didn’t. It’s one thing to complain about not making shots, but there wasn’t much siccum between those heaves, either.

It shouldn’t be gone long. Washington’s next, and the Huskies – Kent helpfully pointed out – have lost seven in a row. He’s hoping the rivalry will be enough to bring his audience back.

They can even wear the grays again. Might want to wash out the residue of this one, however.