Opponents Find The Answer To WSU’S Long-Range Threat

After Jan-Michael Thomas’ 1-for-9 shooting performance against Arizona, it was easy to shrug it off as a bad night.

The next game’s 2-for-12 performance? Well, maybe he was just in a mini-slump.

But following his third subpar performance, a 2-of-9 effort against Oregon State, it became obvious: The rest of the Pac-10 has figured out Thomas’ game.

After being 32 for 65 from behind the arc the first time through the Pac-10, the junior is 9 for 30 from 3-point range through the first four games of the second half.

The one game where he shot better than 50 percent in the second half of the season was against against Arizona State, when he went 5 for 9. He did not play against the Sun Devils the first time through the conference because of illness.

Arizona’s Jason Terry, whose team was burned for eight 3-pointers the first time they played Thomas and only one the second time, said the scout film allowed them to figure out tendencies to Thomas’ game

“When he puts it down to the left, you know he is going to go for his shot,” Terry said. “That’s what we kept telling everybody that was guarding him.”

Other teams have picked up on similar tendencies. To compensate, Thomas, who still leads the Pac-10 in 3-point shooting percentage (44), has started to drive to the basket more. But he has not figured out how to get his shot off cleanly on the perimeter or in traffic.

“Right now, he is a guy that is just not good at creating his own shot,” said WSU coach Kevin Eastman, whose team will take on Cal at 7 tonight at Friel Court.

The team has been working with Thomas on this aspect of his game during practice. They have also been working at finding him a little quicker when he comes off screens.

But Eastman said the responsibility of scoring lies mainly with Thomas.

“What he has got to do is make sure the open ones he gets, he puts them in,” the coach said. “Enough have to go in to keep him in an offensive groove and help him feel good about his game.”

Thomas is three 3-pointers shy of breaking the WSU season record of 83 set by Eddie Hill in 1994.

Tournament talk

Ben Braun doesn’t just believe the Pac-10 should get only four or five teams in the NCAA Tournament. In fact, the Cal coach feels that if the Big 10 is capable of getting eight teams in, as is the current speculation, the Pac-10 deserves eight as well.

“I get a chuckle out of people around the country talking about eight teams from one league,” he said. “I have respect for those leagues, but boy, if they can get eight teams in, I know we can get eight teams in.

“I’d like to see some of those teams go play USC, who just knocked off Stanford. And play some of the teams who are numerically at the bottom of our conference like Washington State. Just so they could see how tough our league is.”

But the more pressing issue for the Bears (14-8, 5-7) is making sure they are in the top half of the conference standings and in position to get one of the 64 NCAA berths.

“Our goal was to finish in the upper division of our league, whether it is fifth, fourth, third or whatever,” said Braun, whose team is tied for sixth. “In trying to get to the upper level, we have to gain the consistency it takes to do that.

“Teams that play with that consistency, they are going to get those spots and then get those NCAA Tournament bids.”

So far, the Bears have not been one of those teams. Their two-game win streak represents their first back-to-back wins since December. And after beating North Carolina, which was in the Top 10, at home in December, Cal lost seven of its next 10 games.

Cal again knocked off a Top 10 opponent in UCLA on Saturday. The Bears play four of their last six games on the road.

Derailed

A week ago, UCLA’s Steve Lavin was calling Stanford a “runaway freight train.”

That train came to a screeching halt with an 86-82 overtime loss to USC. Stanford has lost three of its last six. Two of those losses have been at Maples Pavilion, where the Cardinal had been nearly invincible, winning 34 of its last 36 games. Those losses were to a team without its top player - UConn’s Richard Hamilton - and to USC, a team that had three Pac-10 wins.

Odds are the tournament committee will no longer look at the Cardinal. With its recent swoon, No. 7 Stanford has gift-wrapped the No. 1 seed in the West for Auburn.

Stanford still probably has a hold on the No. 2 seed.

When push comes to shove

Washington State’s Kojo Mensah-Bonsu has been whistled for two intentional fouls in the past two games.

Neither foul was the end-of-the-game variety that most are used to seeing.

Both could have been grounds for ejection.

But Eastman is not worried about Menha-Bonsu’s over-the-top emotions. The WSU coach believes that is one of his best attributes.

“If you take his emotion away he is just an ordinary player,” he said.

While the coach did not defend the kidney punch Mensah-Bonsu delivered in the Oregon State game, he does believe the senior’s actions at Oregon may have been warranted.

During that game, Mensah-Bonsu was stuck on his back underneath 7-foot-2 Chris Christoffersen. He attempted to get up several times, but the freshman center would not move. No foul was called on Christoffersen.

“That one is understandable,” Eastman said. “I’m pretty sure everyone else at some level would have done similar things.”

Eastman classified what Mensah-Bonsu did to Christoffersen as a “push.” If so, it was the one-handed, closed-fist variety.