Transition complete

PULLMAN – On the flight from Los Angeles to Spokane Thursday night after Washington State’s first-round elimination from the Pac-10 men’s basketball tournament, Dick Bennett made it through not one, not two, but three golf magazines.

The retiring head coach is clearly moving on from his now-finished career with ease. Meanwhile, his son, new head coach Tony Bennett, wasn’t on the flight, having stayed behind in California to do some recruiting work.

The off-season for WSU basketball is barely 72 hours old, and already things are starting to look a little different.

That news probably comes as a cause for both relief and anxiety to Cougars fans, who can’t help but wonder if they should be focusing on the promise of a maturing team and a new head coach or the dismal reality of a 2-14 season-ending stretch.

Over the final two months of the season, WSU turned a promising 9-3 start into a last-place finish in the conference and an 11-17 mark. It beat Washington twice, something that hadn’t happened in 12 years, but otherwise won just two other conference games.

Before his final year as head coach started, Dick Bennett warned that a rough road was ahead – having just one player with more than a year of experience will do that, he warned – and nothing that happened along the way made Bennett look foolish for saying so.

As their season unraveled the Cougars looked too weak, too immature, too careless and too nonchalant to be effective in a major conference setting.

Another year may change that – especially for the large group of sophomores that will in theory become a seasoned junior class in 2006-07. But this is also a roster that’s likely to see some changes coming after the disappointment of the 2006 Pac-10 season.

Already the Cougars have two new players arriving next year in New Zealander Thomas Abercrombie and Tulane transfer Taylor Rochestie. If other players should decide to transfer or fail to make the cut academically, it remains possible that the Cougars could go hunting for more talent this spring.

They’ll also have to decide if junior Rodney Edgerson’s significant back injuries warrant another shot next season or, more likely, a medical waiver that will end his WSU basketball career and allow for the use of his scholarship elsewhere.

But Tony Bennett has to know that no matter who he hires as a new primary recruiter – a position he held as an assistant – improvement from next season’s team almost certainly has to come from within.

Josh Akognon finished as the team’s leading scorer with 10.3 points a game, but he started just 13 of 28 contests and his role diminished as the season continued. As a result, it’s Robbie Cowgill, Kyle Weaver and Derrick Low, 2-3-4 on the team in scoring this season, who will carry the load. It’s the general opinion at WSU that their progress in the summer should dictate if the Cougars can climb out of the Pac-10 cellar – and if so, how far they can rise.

The younger Bennett will also have to decide if the Cougars will play the same defensive style employed under his father or if they’ll push the ball more next season.

Regardless of what he does in the next months, however, change isn’t just coming at WSU. It’s already arrived.