Fontaine’s Plan Doesn’t Lead Cougars Astray Call For Ball Leads To Game-Winning Jump Shot

Beat the defender, drive to an open spot on the floor, pull up and bury the short jump shot.

It was a simple plan, but one that had worked all night for Washington State’s Isaac Fontaine.

So it should have come as little surprise to any of the 8,751 madly screaming fans in Redbird Arena that it was that exact plan Fontaine employed again in the final 30 seconds to bury Illinois State 83-80 in the second round of the National Invitation Tournament.

“I told Donminic (Ellison) coming out of a timeout that if he got in trouble to get the ball to me,” Fontaine said of the moments leading up to his acrobatic drive down the lane and game-winning five-foot jumper that propelled the Cougars into a quarterfinal-round showdown against Canisius Thursday night.

“I like to drive a lot and there were a lot of open drives tonight. I wasn’t really forcing anything because I didn’t get any charges - which is unbelievable. But I was just driving to the open spots and hitting little jump shots.

“It as working the whole game, so I kept doing it.”

Fontaine came out high to get the ball from Ellison with the shot clock winding down. He made a quick ball fake, blew past Dan Muller and pulled up in front of ISU’s frontline help to make the shot that became the game winner.

WSU coach Kevin Eastman said he wasn’t at all surprised to see Fontaine call for the ball during his team’s most crucial possession of the game.

“Ike thinks he should take the shot on every possession,” Eastman said jokingly. “So what we usually do is ask Ike, ‘Ike, are you gonna shoot it this possession?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, probably.’

“But he knows we’re confident in him. He’s a very good driver. He’s a hard guy to guard. That (last drive) had to be a difficult decision, and I thought he did a great job of choosing and making proper decisions on his drives all night.”

Fontaine finished with a game-high 23 points and made a big impression on ISU coach Kevin Stallings.

But then, so did a lot of the Cougars.

“They were able to get it in the right guy’s hands all night,” Stallings said. “But they had a lot of right guys. Kevin’s got a little bit of an idea what he’s doing over there, and it’s not by accident that they get the ball in the right person’s hands.”

It was shortly before Fontaine’s big basket that Eastman unintentionally provided some comic relief during one of the tensest moments of the game.

With just over a minute left and the Cougars ahead 81-78, Eastman hurriedly stepped onto the floor and retrieved a small object that was rolling around.

An official immediately had the public address announcer warn the crowd not to throw things on the floor.

Then, Eastman had to run down the official and explain that the object was a button off his suit coat. The official retracted his warning.

Afterward, someone suggested that Eastman’s decision to fess up about the loose button was a first-class act.

“Yeah,” Eastman agreed. “A first-class act by somebody wearing a third-class suit.”