John Blanchette : Aussie come lately comes up huge for Cougs

LOS ANGELES – There are no secrets, or at least certainly none that stands 6-foot-10. Washington State wasn’t going to sneak Aron Baynes into the Staples Center in an equipment trunk.

Not even in an equipment truck.

But when you tote up all the typical assets tournament-bound basketball teams have, there is something to be said for the late-breaking development – and when we pair “late” and “breaking” it’s not meant as a reflection on the big fella’s foot speed.

But at this time of year when player rotations are all but locked in and scouting reports are mostly recycled from the regular season, Aron Baynes has given the Cougars a wrinkle that can’t help but make life more difficult for whatever teams they happen to run into this week at the Pacific-10 Conference tournament.

A big wrinkle. An elephantine wrinkle.

“Coming into a tournament where everybody’s seen each other and knows what to expect,” said WSU forward Robbie Cowgill, “he’s a different dimension.”

And when he says “dimension” he doesn’t mean … well, OK, he does mean it.

Baynes is big. Outsized. Copious.

Yes, there are larger men in college basketball in both height and girth, and yet any opponent chasing a Cougar around screens quickly comes to the understanding that the big Aussie is four laps to the mile.

“You really can’t get around him,” Cowgill allowed. “You tell people that you really don’t understand it until you have to guard him how big he is. It’s impossible. There’s nowhere to poke your arm through or try to sneak around.”

But really, the dimension Cowgill originally referenced was the breakthrough Baynes made last Saturday in the overtime win against USC that clinched second place for the Cougs – a 25-point, 10-for-10 display that was as shocking as it was familiar. It was the Chief from “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” skipping down the court with a grin after looking at the basketball as if it were a foreign object just moments before.

And in the last game of the regular season, coach Tony Bennett had this new toy.

Thunder from Down Under.

“The dimension he gives us is significant,” Bennett said. “Not that he’s a dominant low-post scorer, but he is a dominant presence in terms of creating space.”

But the issue is as much timing as size.

Over the course of the season, Baynes led the Cougars in nothing other than body surface area. He missed the first five games recovering from off-season ankle surgery and three more midseason with another sprain.

But in WSU’s last road game at Oregon State, Baynes had nine straight points – and 14 total – to propel the Cougars to a victory. He scored 10 more in a home loss to UCLA before the crazy exhibition against the Trojans.

The upshot is that he’s played more than a third of his season minutes and scored more than half of his points in the last five games. That those minutes have come at the expense of senior Ivory Clark is of some distress to Clark – as he made public in these pages earlier this week – but the fact is, the Cougars should still be able to call his number. But there’s also this new thing.

And Baynes, a sophomore who made modest contributions a year ago, is sensitive to matters of chemistry.

“You don’t want to upset what’s working,” said the sophomore from Cairns, along the Great Barrier Reef. “We’ve had a pretty good season – one of the best in years here – so I don’t want to do anything to hurt that.”

Indeed, as frustrated as he was with his health situation early in the season, “as long as we get those wins, it’s not as bad as it could have been.”

But it was a little frustrating for his teammates.

“This is the Aron the guys here expected to see,” Cowgill said. “He’s finally getting back in a rhythm and getting some confidence.

“We really don’t have another inside scoring threat. We have more skilled bigs who will pop out and hit jumpers and opportunistic finishers like Ivory around the rim. He’s an inside presence who opens things up for us outside. You saw the USC game where Daven (Harmeling) and I got four or five wide-open looks from the top of the key because they were choking down on him.”

There is a slightly cartoonish look to Baynes that leads to almost knee-jerk underestimation. But he’s had a chance to play himself into shape – Bennett said he’s down to 262 pounds after being as heavy as 287 when WSU played Gonzaga – and if he’s a little awkward looking, “he’ll surprise you with his north-south and vertical,” Bennett said.

But mostly, he’s surprised everybody with his timing – not just better late than never, but maybe even better late than early.

“It makes you tougher to prepare for,” Bennett said. “People say you don’t really need to watch Washington or Arizona State (who met Wednesday for the chance to play WSU in the quarterfinals). Well, you do. They might be playing different personnel. And so are we.

“It’s not just Aron. Mac Hopson is back in the rotation now, and Taylor Rochestie has stepped up. Three weeks ago, you would have seen very limited minutes for a couple of those guys. We’re not the kind of team that’s set at eight guys – or at least not the same eight.”

And you never know who Bennett might pull out of the equipment truck.