Fans show up, but team hasn’t arrived yet

Not to hammer too hard on the whole whose-town- is-it-anyway business of college basketball in Spokane, but this one is just irresistible.

It seems a fellow was on the phone Thursday afternoon looking to buy seats for Washington State’s Pacific-10 Conference opener against Arizona at the Spokane Arena, so he called the place where he dead-solid knows tickets are sold in this city.

Gonzaga University’s ticket office.

“I want tickets for the game tonight,” he said.

The cheerful voice at other end did her best to help, explaining that “We play Saint Joseph’s on Saturday, but it’s sold out.”

“No,” came the reply, “the Cougar game tonight.”

“Uh, this is the Gonzaga ticket office.”

“Yeah. So?”

Sigh.

So some things shouldn’t need explaining. But then again, every step in the resurrection of Cougars basketball is a baby one.

For instance, just when the Wazzu seemed to have a breakthrough in the cause – an Arena crowd of 6,684, or arguably the largest Spokane crowd to show up with the expressed purpose of rooting on the Cougs in 10 years – they fainted a bit at the sight. The first Arizona team in 19 years to tumble out of the Top 25 was plenty good enough to leave a 70-52 bruise on the Cougs, pretty much extinguishing the glow from their flawless romp over Utah a week ago in Seattle.

Indeed, the burning question after WSU’s 7-2 – are the Cougars for real? – was delivered a definitive answer.

Yes, they are.

Real ordinary.

At least they were on this night. And for a change, the blame can’t be pinned on location.

The Cougs have chafed at their reception in Spokane of late, unable to strike any sort of spark in the ongoing love monsoon for Gonzaga. Audiences of 3,000 – yes, modest; yes, unfortunate – were regarded as a virtual insult, even as the same games at the same times would have drawn (and in previous years, did) half that in Pullman.

But then the Cougars got it rolling this fall, sailing through a representative pre-Pac schedule that included Wyoming and Kansas State, among others, 7-2. The Utah chestnut clinched it, and in the space of a week presales for this date at the Spokane time share went from 1,700 or so to more than 6,000. The final count was better than any Pullman draw last season save for the slam dunks against Gonzaga and Washington, and even topped last week’s venture in Seattle – where all the alums and students are, we’re reminded constantly – by 1,400.

“I talked to a lot of Cougars tonight who thought they could wait until after Christmas to get their tickets,” said WSU athletic director Jim Sterk, “and found themselves sitting upstairs. That’s a positive problem – and they felt that way, too.”

Now on to the other problems, not so positive.

What the Cougars didn’t run into during the shakedown phase of the season was a team remotely as athletic as the Wildcats, and it took about 17 minutes for that to get exposed Thursday night.

“We’re not used to playing against that kind of quickness and pressure,” admitted forward Robbie Cowgill, who had a bench-seat view of the initial undoing due to a pair of early fouls. “Offensively for us, it really took us out of our game. We couldn’t rotate the ball, they were cutting off the passing lanes and we never really adapted.

“And when we ran offense a little better in the second half, we couldn’t stop them.”

Certainly they couldn’t stop Hassan Adams, who had 10 straight Arizona points in the spurt that put the Wildcats up by 17 points. The Cougs never did find an answer for him until coach Dick Bennett tried Ivory Clark, though frankly Adams may have lost interest in the proceedings by that stage.

In any event, this was a signal to Bennett that what lies ahead may be quite different from what’s in their wake.

“Our small lineup against their small lineup was just no match,” he said, “and we couldn’t play big because of their pressure. Ultimately, this team is going to have to become a bigger team for us to compete.”

And by that he meant?

“Everybody seems to be playing small these days,” said Bennett, noting the Wildcats’ most effective lineup had only one true big man (6-foot-10 Kirk Walters), plus 6-7 freshman Marcus Williams and no one else over 6-6. “But their small guys are real good.

“We’ve been trying to play small, too, and that was good against a lot of clubs, but to compete at a higher level, to get our share of rebounds, we need to play bigger. I’ve tried to do it in practice, but it hasn’t come to be yet – but we may have to experiment with it in the future.”

Actually, the experiment has to succeed. Small or not, the Wildcats brutalized WSU on the glass 47-27, including 21 offensive rebounds. But it was damaging on both ends.

“With the number of long shots they were taking, we knew we’d have a lot of long rebounds,” said Arizona coach Lute Olson. “And most of the times we had long rebounds, we had good opportunities to score.”

Arizona’s shooting percentage – just 42.6 – would suggest that WSU’s defense was at least respectable, and to point it was.

“But they broke us down easily,” insisted Bennett. “We could not stop them, which is not typical of us – but it’s not surprising going against a club like this.”

In other words, Arizona – despite a rather indifferent December – is still Arizona. Draw your own conclusions about the Cougars, though let the last two seasons remind us of what Bennett has managed to wring from the rag.

“This is really disappointing because it felt like everything was coming together, and then it all came crashing down on us,” Cowgill said.

“They’re very beatable and you could see that at times, when we were playing well in the first 10 or 12 minutes. We were missing shots but we were still right there. But then it seemed like we played a little scared – backing away instead of going at them.

“It’s too bad. It was a loud, a great atmosphere, great Cougar fans. I just wish we could have given them more to cheer about.”

Well, if nothing else, at least they know now where to buy their tickets.