Bennett looks for progress
Like everyone else, Washington State basketball coach Tony Bennett has a wish list he hopes to fill by Christmas.
Like a lot of us, he’s starting on that list today, the traditional beginning of the shopping season.
And, like most, his list has to do with others. It’s all about his basketball team.
Between now and the first of the year, Bennett hopes to mark off everything on his list, which includes settling on a player rotation, improving the team nature of the WSU defense, fine-tuning the offense and perfecting every aspect of the ninth-ranked Cougars’ game. All before the Pac-10 season begins Jan. 5.
Though WSU began on his list already, with a 3-0 start, the Cougars will take three more steps this weekend at the Spokane Arena.
The inaugural Cougar Hispanic College Fund Challenge begins tonight, with Air Force and Mississippi Valley State playing at 5, followed by the Cougars’ matchup with Montana at 7:30.
If you want to witness the post-Thanksgiving basketball frenzy, there’s plenty of room. As of Wednesday afternoon, only about 4,000 tickets per session had been sold for the 12,210-seat Arena.
Maybe the Cougars coming to Spokane doesn’t hold the cachet it once did. WSU has played at least one game in the Arena for 13 consecutive years.
“We just felt it was important to once again play in Spokane,” Bennett said this week. “When you have a chance to bring in some good teams to Spokane, that was important.”
The Cougars felt it was so important they reportedly paid $50,000 to pull out of the Great Alaska Shootout, going on this weekend with Gonzaga and Eastern Washington.
“When this opportunity presented itself, we jumped at it,” Bennett said of putting together the Spokane stop. “We already have four (non-conference) road games. We felt this would be a chance to not travel quite as much, and bring in some decent teams, play in front of the local crowd.”
The Cougars have in the past played Pac-10 teams in Spokane when the WSU students were on Christmas break. But recently the scheduling philosophy is to bring non-conference opponents to the Arena.
“It’s important for us to play our conference games in Pullman, quite honestly,” Bennett said. “That’s where we practice, that’s where we play and we want to continue to try to establish that as our home-court advantage.
“We (played conference games in Spokane) early and now that we’ve gotten a little more established, we want to play our conference games (at home). We would be the only team not to play conference games in their own building.”
The teams coming in include Air Force (4-0), yet to lose under new coach Jeff Reynolds, Montana (3-1), who’s only loss came at GU, and Mississippi Valley State (0-3), an NIT participant last season.
All of which go a long way in helping Bennett mark off his list.
“You’ll see different types of teams,” Bennett said, “but very good tests for us. And different styles, which is always good to play against early in the year.”