From Palo Alto -- Que Johnson tied his career high with 21 points last night, and has scored 14 or more points in five of WSU's last seven games. Royce Woolridge also had a strong first half. Thus ends the good news following Washington State's 80-48 loss to Stanford. With 7 minutes and 11 seconds left in the first half, the Cougars led 24-20. From that point they were outscored, 60-24, one-point worse than their 60-25 loss at Arizona.

More on the game, after the jump.

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The Cougars were able to keep it close thanks to Johnson's first-half heroics. The freshman had 15 points when the Cougars headed into the locker room, but was only able to put up six in the second half. Johnson also had 15 in a half against Arizona State, but has yet to consistently contribute  at that level throughout a game.

"It would really help if I could rest him a little more," Bone said. "He's in decent shape; he's in good shape. But some guys are phenomenal with their stamina and I don't think he's bad, but it's hard for him to play that many minutes. At the very end of the game he was still in because I wanted him to get as much experience as possible but, heck, he could barely come off a screen (at that point).

Bone said that the game plan against Stanford was to attack the passing lanes, and that it didn't work. Because of that, he said the team would try something different when the team's next face each other.

"It did not work very well tonight," he said. "They exposed us in a number of areas."

The Cougars will have a chance for revenge when they host Stanford on Feb. 15. The home team has won eight of the last 10 games in the series.

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