Cougars crank up the volume

PULLMAN – All sorts of Dick Bennett-era offensive records were set in Washington State’s 86-55 season-opening basketball win over University of California Riverside.

The bad news is Bennett now wishes he had never scheduled the game in the first place.

Playing against UCR’s frenetic, pressing, sieve-like defense, the Cougars scored the program’s most points in a game since Bennett took over prior to the 2003 season in front of 1,526 at Friel Court.

According to Bennett, that didn’t come without a price.

“Those kind of games drive me as close to my breaking point as any because it creates a level of sloppiness that is hard to correct,” said Bennett, whose Cougars committed 22 turnovers. “They want you to go to the rim, they want you to make plays and that’s not our game. I thought it took us back a step or two.”

Washington State (1-0) shot 60.8 percent from the field, led offensively by a career-high 22 points and four 3-pointers from Josh Akognon. Freshman Aron Baynes, playing his first Division I game, had 19 points in 19 minutes on 7-of-8 shooting, and Derrick Low had 15 points and a career-high 11 assists.

UC Riverside’s shoot-first, think-second philosophy may have worked had they hit more than 24.1 percent of their shots. In the first half, which ended with the Cougars on top 44-19, the Highlanders (0-1) were 6 of 38 from the field and 0 for 16 on 3-point shots. UCR missed 21 of its first 23 shots from the field as WSU built a 35-9 lead by the 5:24 mark in the first half.

“We knew they were going to shoot, we just wanted to get in a position where we could get back,” Low said. “We wanted to stop their transition offense and make them work for a shot and make it difficult for them.”

WSU went on a 34-6 run covering the majority of the first half, during which Akognon hit three 3-pointers and the Cougars broke the Highlanders’ pressure frequently, leading to 3- and 2-on-1 breaks and easy lay-ins.

“Their (press) was good, but sometimes we just had lapses,” Low said. “We had to tighten up on those, but other times you see what we could do against a press because there were open spots, we just had to look for those more often.”

Kyle Weaver added 10 points and seven assists for the Cougars while helping break the pressure, and the 6-foot-10, 247-pound Baynes often got easy buckets off of Weaver and Low’s attacking.

Bennett still wasn’t pleased with the Cougars frontcourt, as Baynes, Ivory Clark, Chris Henry and Daven Harmeling only combined for 12 rebounds.

“I thought our interior people didn’t demonstrate any superiority, and I was looking for that,” said Bennett, as the Cougars outrebounded UCR 42-35. “This is a team that we should have just dominated on the glass and inside, and our inside people didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to finish in traffic or grab rebounds in traffic and those are things that they’re going to have to do.”

Baynes, though only 18 years old, understood one rebound wasn’t enough, even in the wake of a much-improved offensive performance after fouling out with two points in 13 minutes of WSU’s exhibition against Lewis-Clark State.

“Rebounding, that’s pretty much the thing we’re taking out of today,” Baynes said. “If we’re going to compete in the league, then we have to get on the boards a lot more.”

Notes

Harmeling left the game with 10 minutes remaining when he suffered a self-reduced dislocation of his left shoulder, where the shoulder dislocates and pops back in on its own. He didn’t return. … The 31-point margin of victory was WSU’s largest since a 103-55 win over Prairie View A&M on Nov. 24, 2001.

WSU 86, UC Riverside 55

UC Riverside (0-1)–Williams 1-14 0-0 2, Misko 0-2 2-2 2, Porter 2-6 2-2 8, Power 4-12 1-1 11, L.Cunningham 4-13 1-1 10, Johnson 1-6 0-0 2, S.Cunningham 3-9 3-4 10, Bates 3-11 0-0 6, Bekono 0-1 2-2 2, Knox 0-1 0-0 0, Soto 0-0 0-0 0, Cobbs 1-4 0-0 2. Totals 19-79 11-12 55.

Washington State (1-0)–Clark 1-5 3-4 5, Henry 2-5 2-2 6, Akognon 8-11 2-3 22, Low 5-7 3-4 15, Weaver 4-5 2-2 10, Campbell 1-1 0-0 2, Matthews 0-2 0-0 0, Baynes 7-8 5-7 19, Green 1-4 1-1 3, Chavers 0-1 0-0 0, Harmeling 2-2 0-0 4. Totals 31-51 18-23 86.

Halftime–Washington State 44, UC Riverside 19. 3-point goals–UC Riverside 6-33 (Porter 2-2, Power 2-9, S.Cunningham 1-3, L.Cunningham 1-6, Knox 0-1, Johnson 0-3, Bates 0-4), Washington State 6-13 (Akognon 4-7, Low 2-4, Matthews 0-1, Green 0-1). Fouled out–None. Rebounds–UC Riverside 35 (Power, Bates, Cobbs 4), Washington State 42 (Akognon, Weaver 8). Assists–UCR 5 (Porter, Power, L.Cunningham, S.Cunningham, Knox 1), WSU 27 (Low 11). Total fouls–UCR 21, WSU 17. A–1,526.