Contrasting styles will be on display

PULLMAN – It will get no national billing. No television crew will be on hand to cover the game. With school out for Thanksgiving break, attendance figures to be sparse.

But rarely will anyone find a more bizarre and potentially fascinating contrast on a basketball court.

In one corner is Washington State, coached by Dick Bennett.

The Cougars, of course, play patient, hard-nosed half-court defense. Bennett’s Cougars played an exhibition game earlier this week and won 66-36.

In the other corner is the visiting team, UC Riverside.

The Highlanders feature first-year coach David Spencer, and play a style that might as well be called basketball on speed. Spencer’s Highlanders played an exhibition game against Redlands earlier this week and won 162-123.

So, what’s going to happen when these teams start their seasons on Friel Court at 5:30 p.m.?

“Ooooh,” Bennett said, shuddering at the possibilities. “It’s bound to be a good experience, that’s for sure.”

Actually, there is a game to use as an example. When now-associate head coach Tony Bennett was a freshman playing for his father at UW Green Bay, he and his teammates squared off against a famed Loyola Marymount run-and-gun team featuring Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble.

Spencer had helped recruit those two players, both of whom became NCAA scoring champions. The final score was in the 80s, and most likely today’s game could end up somewhere in that vicinity.

“It is a matter of who wins the tempo battle,” Dick Bennett said. “It’s not the kind of game where you can sit on the ball because they’ll force you into turnovers.”

Bennett has settled on a backcourt of sophomores Derrick Low, Josh Akognon and Kyle Weaver.

The starting low-post players will be chosen from the group of Ivory Clark, Daven Harmeling and Chris Henry.