John Blanchette: Hard to say goodbye to Cougars trio

So here comes their last home game, and maybe it’s true that you can’t say enough about the seniors who changed the face of basketball at Washington State.

But you can also say this:

As bad as it was – as many lumps and losing streaks as they had to endure to get to the giddy payoff of the past two seasons – they also never knew just how bad it had been before.

They weren’t witness to the scorched earth that was Cougar Basketball B.C. (Bennetts Coming). The natives were, of course, and this is why their love sometimes washes over the sides and swamps the Cougars’ humble dinghy, as it probably will Saturday afternoon against Washington unless the student body skedaddles en masse for spring break.

Senior Day – is this ever a tough trick. How do you take them one game at a time when everyone wants to relive the last 60?

Three get their Pullman send off Saturday – Robbie Cowgill, Derrick Low and Kyle Weaver. Daven Harmeling and Chris Henry also arrived in that first Bennett class in the fall of 2004, but injuries pushed their departure date back a year. The collective shrug they elicited in the closed society of basketball recruiting was, of course, the jumping off point of college basketball’s most charming fable of 2007. Other details came out in dribs and drabs any time the story was advanced – when a string of humiliations against a Pac-10 rival was snapped, or there was another leap in the polls. Just the other day, coach Tony Bennett reminded us that Weaver would not have even reached Pullman had the NCAA not repealed its misbegotten rule that limited schools to filling eight scholarships over the space of two years. His was No. 9.

But then, their gift has been staying as much as coming – a notion they sometimes resist.

“I never thought of myself as a special character guy,” Cowgill said Wednesday. “I think we’re just guys who’ve never known any other way. It kind of surprises me when people say, ‘It was so courageous of you guys to hang in there.’ Well, of course we’re going to do that – we made a commitment. But I guess the more I see, maybe that isn’t the norm.”

In any case, the Cougs are quickly approaching the intersection of one of sport’s timeless debates and hoariest truisms:

“Is it more difficult getting good or staying good?

“Never be the guy who follows The Guy.

The guys who, symbolically at least, have to follow The Guys arrive next fall, Bennett’s next five: Marcus Capers, Michael Harthun, Klay Thompson, James Watson and Nick Witherill. There may be a sixth, too, but however it shakes out they will be the long-term answer to the question of whether what Bennett has wrought here can be continued – not to diminish the roles of the eight other players who will remain in the program.

The next class will have the advantage of not having to start from ground zero. They’ll also have much to live up to.

But it’s happened before in the hiccupy history of Wazzu hoops. In the late 1960s, Marv Harshman and Jud Heathcote seemed to build two-by-two. Jim McKean and Ray Stein were the gems of the first significant class. Lenny Allen and Ted Wierman came a year later, Gary Elliot and Rick Erickson a year after that, and finally Jim Meredith and Dennis Hogg. The result was 83 wins in five years in an era when 20 a year was a rare milestone.

George Raveling laid his foundation with Steve Puidokas, a couple of junior college shooters and some role players. The second wave came four years later – Terry Kelly, Don Collins, Stuart House – and took the Cougars to their first NCAA tournament in 39 years.

Bennett has, he acknowledged, probably upped the talent level with his latest class. That isn’t his real concern.

“Maybe this group has a little more gloss or is a little higher regarded,” he said of the incoming Cougs. “But the bottom line is two things. Will they gel and mesh together and have that bond from the chemistry standpoint that this group did? And this group also improved individually and collectively from their freshman year to now.

“If this next group will have that type of cohesiveness and develop, I’ll be very pleased. But those intangibles are significant. Will they have that hunger to keep the program going in the right direction? Because sometimes that’s more challenging.”

Cougars history backs that up, as well. And in almost every instance where the challenge wasn’t met, a coaching change was at the root of it. So naturally Bennett’s sustained commitment figures into it, too.

But players established the culture at Wazzu as well as the coaching staff. And surely the next class can take something from the departing one.

“Buy in and trust the system,” Cowgill said. “I hope this group of seniors will have proven that. Even if you’re not the most talented or not the high flyers or highly recruited, if you do it the right way it’ll happen. It might take a little longer, but it’s going to work.”