WSU advances, just like that
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – All it took for 24 years of history to turn on its head was three seconds.
The Cougars, trailing by six and playing generally bad basketball for the first half of its first-round NCAA tournament game against Oral Roberts, changed their fortunes in a flurry of action just before halftime.
First, Taylor Rochesite drove the lane and hit a tough, hanging bank shot with 5 seconds left. Then, Kyle Weaver stole the inbounds pass from ORU’s Yemi Ogunoye and threw down a two-handed dunk with two ticks left.
Suddenly, the Cougar deficit had shrunk to two as WSU skipped into the locker room with the exuberance of a winner.
The second half proved that WSU (26-7) was just that, as the third-seeded Cougars dominated the final 20 minutes and won 70-54. It’s the school’s first NCAA tournament win since 1983, and this turnaround team has now matched the school record for victories in a season, set in 1940-41.
“It’s not satisfying yet,” Weaver said. “It’s definitely a good feeling getting this first one.
“We just wanted it bad. We didn’t want to come out and play like we did in the first half. We got all the jitters out.”
And how. The Cougars, now 10-2 on the season when trailing at halftime, went on a 16-2 run to start the second half and never looked back.
Working off of its usual script, WSU got the win thanks to contributions from a number of players. Ivory Clark, coming off the bench and out of the doghouse, scored a game-high 19 points and had five blocks. Derrick Low, rebounding from a spotty second half of the season, had 12 big points. Rochestie had 15 and helped run a patient Cougar offense. And Robbie Cowgill handled ORU power forward Caleb Green with skill on the defensive end, holding the star to 13 points and helping to frustrate the 14th-seeded Golden Eagles.
“In this tournament you need some balance and I think we showed that,” Cougar coach Tony Benett said. “Maybe we wore them down a little bit.”
In the process, the Cougars seemed to prove how and why they’ve gotten this far.
“I don’t know if we need to validate anything,” Low said. “I just think we need to play good basketball. We know that our season can end within any game and we want to make the best of it.”
The Golden Eagles (23-11) were the more experienced NCAA tournament team, having played and lost in the first round last season. Early, it appeared that they were the more comfortable team. ORU collected 10 first-half rebounds on offense and turned them into 11 points.
But everything that ORU tried in the second half seemed to go poorly. When the Golden Eagles threw the ball inside to Green, Cowgill and Clark were there to harass him. When they tried a full-court press, WSU broke it with ease and scored easy buckets. And when they forced tough shots, the Cougars made them anyway.
“I thought they showed in the second half why they’re one of the best 10 or 15 teams in America,” ORU coach Scott Sutton said. “They executed. They made shots. They made it tough on us to score.”
Things will not get any easier for the Cougars. They’ll next play sixth-seeded Vanderbilt, which defeated George Washington by 33 points on Saturday. On the line will be a spot in the Sweet 16, somewhere WSU has never been since the tournament’s expansion.
As for those who picked the Cougars to lose in the first round? Well, WSU seems perfectly content to keep on playing the underdog in this tournament as it goes for a school-record 27th win on Saturday.
“I think they can say what they want to say and we’ll just do what we do and believe in ourselves and stay together,” Cowgill said. “What they’ll probably say is, ‘Just look at the first half.’ That’s OK. We really do believe in this system. We know if we play the right way … we’ll be able to compete in the second half.”
Notes
Clark’s five blocks tied a career high. … Weaver had 10 points for the game despite committing his second foul just four minutes into the game. Bennett had his junior guard on the floor for the last 7 minutes of the half despite the foul trouble. … ORU’s Ken Tutt had 19 points to lead the Golden Eagles, but outside of Tutt and Green they managed just 22 points. … The Cougars made 16 of 27 second-half field goals.