Cougars prepare for unknown rival
PULLMAN – Washington State practiced Tuesday morning on campus before heading to Los Angeles for the Pac-10 tournament.
As it was the last session before making the flight, the Cougars tried to get ready for their next opponent. The only problem is, they don’t know who that opponent will be just yet.
Seventh-seeded Washington will meet 10th-seeded Arizona State at 8:30 p.m. today in a first-round game to determine who gets to move on and play WSU on Thursday. For the time being, the Cougars have to sit back and wait for an opponent to come to them.
“It’s going to be a totally different game, what they play (today) and what we’re going to have to play the next day,” center Aron Baynes said. “I don’t think we have to look behind it too much as to what happens in that game.”
WSU has another practice session today – assuming that USC hasn’t withdrawn its invitation to use the Galen Center after Saturday’s double-overtime game. After that, head coach Tony Bennett and his team will have to decide how they’ll take in the night game.
The coach said early Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t decided whether to take his team to the Staples Center to watch or if they’d view the game on television from the team hotel instead.
Regardless, though, it seems a certainty that the Cougars will watch closely.
“I’d like to go watch them play just to see what it’s like, how physical it is,” forward Robbie Cowgill said. “I think it’s good to be there first-hand sometimes.”
The 24-6 Cougars have to worry about putting together a complete scouting report on short notice because of the tournament’s format. (Only the top two seeds have to wait to find out their quarterfinals rivals on Thursday.)
Bennett said his assistants who were responsible for putting together reports on Washington and Arizona State are doing so again this week.
But the coach emphasized that he doesn’t like to present detailed reports to his team, preferring to focus on his team’s play instead.
“We address it a little bit, but I think you can get too focused on that,” Bennett said. “At this point in the year, it’s not memorizing what the other team does. It’s getting good at what you do.”
The Cougars have already seen these two teams before, sweeping both of them in the regular season.
“We played both teams twice,” Bennett said. “They’ll have a game under their belt and they’ll have played well, so they’ll come out ready. But I think you just see if there are any new tendencies that they’re doing.”
Given the unusual degree of success in the regular season, this is a relatively new position going into the tournament for WSU. But two years ago the Cougars came to Los Angeles as a sixth seed and played a Stanford team it defeated twice in the regular season.
Things did not go as well in the first round of the tournament, however, as a last-second shot skipped off the rim and the Cardinal won 60-58.