Cougars will start without Gill

PULLMAN — The last thing Dick Bennett wanted was to have his team limping into the regular season.

After freshman point guard Derrick Low and freshman power forward Chris Henry went down in October, not to return until December, Bennett knew his team would be short-handed.

And now, on the verge of the season opener, the Cougars have also lost a senior, forward Shami Gill.

Gill has a sciatic problem in his hip and almost certainly won’t be able to play tonight as the Cougars tip off their 2004-05 season at 8 p.m. on Friel Court against Montana State. While his injury — Bennett and Washington State hope — won’t be too severe, it does further handicap a team already thin up front.

“We’re really kind of living on the edge right now,” said Bennett, who will probably go from playing three forwards to playing three guards to offset the injury troubles. “That’s what we did last year most of the season, so I’ll be happy just when we can get a full roster and have a deeper bench.”

The injuries haven’t and can’t completely dampen the overall sense of optimism that comes with a new season, however. Even with Gill’s injury, the Cougars still have a number of seniors playing important roles, often a good omen in today’s college basketball world.

“It starts now. We’re very excited,” said Thomas Kelati, one of those seniors and the team’s leading returning scorer at 11.1 points per game last season. “We’re undersized as it is. To lose Shami, he works so hard and it’s going to be hard. We’re going to have to deal with adversity, and we just have to do it.”

And even for the head coach, it’s far from all bad news as the Cougars enter season No. 2 of the Bennett era. While the head coach is — as usual — jittery and unwilling to promise successes that might not come to fruition, Bennett is looking forward to getting the season under way after the Cougars went 13-16 last year with seven wins in the Pac-10.

“Last year I was terrified. This year I’m just scared,” he joked. “I’m always very nervous. It’s not like we’re a well-oiled machine with a lot of success in our background, but every year you start hopeful, so I’m excited, nervous, wondering, all of those things.”

The Cougars may catch a break as their opponent, Montana State, comes to Pullman tonight also undermanned. It’s unlikely that 7-foot senior center Matt Towsley will be able to play because of a back problem, helping to negate WSU’s size disadvantage in the low post. Last season, the Bobcats finished 14-13 but just 4-8 on the road.

Before the men take the floor, the women’s team opens its season at 6 p.m. against Boise State, the first half of a Friel Court doubleheader. Head coach Sherri Murrell enters her third season at WSU with a new motion offense installed, and has said that the new look should suit her team’s strengths.

The Cougars had 20 offensive rebounds in their last exhibition game, a feat Murrell hopes to repeat tonight.

“I don’t like moral victories any more,” said Murrell, whose team went 6-22 last season. “We need to get wins in the preseason because the Pac-10 conference is so tough.”