Before their time

PULLMAN – Maybe it’s unfair to serve up a history quiz shortly after a practice, but one had to wonder … just how much do the current Cougars know about the 1982-83 Washington State men’s basketball team, which until this week had the distinction of being the last WSU team to be ranked?

“Nothing,” junior forward Robbie Cowgill admitted.

Couldn’t even name a player?

“Was it around Ehlo’s time?”

That’s one.

“OK. Who was the coach … was Raveling the coach then?”

Right again.

“That was the last team to be ranked. So yeah, I guess that’s what I know,” Cowgill said with a shrug.

Surely, though, the team’s head coach would know more about that squad.

“I was a pimple-popping teenager,” said Tony Bennett, who was in fact 13 years old when WSU was No. 18 in the nation – albeit for just one week in February of that season.

Bennett, too, managed to rattle off only the names of Craig Ehlo, the team’s second-leading scorer that year, and George Raveling, the head coach.

Ditto for a second junior, Derrick Low, who was shown a team photo but still recognized those two faces and no others.

“I didn’t think it would be this long,” Ehlo said Wednesday evening from his home in Spokane. “I’ve got to tap my memory banks here.”

Ehlo will be on hand in Haas Pavilion to see the current Cougars play as a ranked team tonight at California for the first time since his 1983 team lost a pair of games to UCLA and USC in that February week.

Following those defeats, the Cougars dropped out of the polls, not to return, although they did make the NCAA tournament and win a game before falling to Houston.

Although the current version of the hardwood Cougars is hard-pressed to recall much about that squad, it did give Washington State fans plenty to remember.

Much like the current team, those Cougars got off to a hot start, opening the season 15-2 thanks to a 12-game winning streak. They were 14-0 at home, and the 2006-07 team is also unblemished in Beasley Coliseum.

“We were just like everybody else – just like they’re doing it now. We were overachievers,” Ehlo said. “Our first 10 games we were playing in the Coliseum in front of 2,000 people. And then we started winning.

“After that it just slowly started picking up and gaining momentum. Pretty soon, the students were filling their side and the reserved (tickets) were filling their side.”

The 1983 team also won well more than its share of close games, despite losing leading scorer and rebounder Guy Williams to a knee injury halfway through the season.

The Cougars were 11-4 in games decided by fewer than five points on their way to a 22-6 mark, with Ehlo and fellow seniors Steve Harriel and Aaron Haskins taking on leadership roles after the team lost Williams.

“You just had it in your mind that we could do it and if it was close we would always give ourselves the opportunity,” Ehlo said. “We didn’t have a shot clock, so if we kept the score low it was just because we controlled the ball. We tried to be up-tempo as much as we could and Coach Raveling kind of played to that.”

Ehlo laughed when told that his was the only name players recognized from the team that had its brief moment in the sun. But one of the guards from this year’s team offered the best defense of all.

“That’s way before we were born,” Low said.