Murrell’s team holds out hope as Pac-10s open

Washington State women’s basketball coach Sherri Murrell is a very competitive person, so matching last season’s record heading into the Pac-10 Tournament isn’t exactly what she had in mind.

“One of our goals was to get out of the cellar so I think we accomplished one goal this year,” she said with a wry laugh.

Considering the Pac-10 is the third-ranked league in the country, though, that is an improvement.

Even with an identical the record, the Cougars (6-21 overall, 2-16) go into the tournament at San Jose as the ninth seed, facing No. 8 California tonight at 8:15.

The Golden Bears (10-17, 4-14) are one of the teams the Cougars have beaten, which gives them more hope than in the past three years when they met a team they had lost to twice when they were seeded 10th.

“One of the things that is real positive for our program, our kids, when they have beaten somebody and feel they can beat somebody, they definitely approach the game differently,” Murrell said. “They’re coming in with more confidence. They also know they have to play really hard and really well to beat this team.”

Another positive is experience. Last year the Cougars started three freshmen and occasionally four. This year no freshmen start.

In splitting with Cal for the third straight year, the Cougars lost on the road 64-56 and won at home 79-69.

WSU ranks sixth in the league in defense, giving up 66.6 points a game while the Bears are seventh on offense at 66.5 points a game. Conversely, the Cougars are last in scoring at 57.7 and Cal is last in defense at 71.7.

“I think we’ve had a pretty good second half of the season,” Murrell said. “Defensively we’re doing a really good job. We just have to figure out how to score and score consistently.”

And though the record doesn’t show it, the Cougars have been more competitive. The year before she arrived, WSU lost by an average of 22.5 but that number has dropped dramatically in her three years, 20.5 to 12.5 to 8.9 this year.

The winner meets second-ranked Stanford (26-2), which won the league championship for the fifth straight season, in the quarterfinals at 5 p.m. on Saturday.

The other first-round game tonight is No. 7 Washington (13-15) against No. 10 Oregon State (6-22). The winner meets second-seeded Oregon (19-8) Saturday at 1:15.