A few thoughts before Oregon

COUGARS

Less than an hour to tipoff and we finally are getting you our pregame post. You ticked or happy? Either way, read on. We also have some football news.

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• First the football stuff. Washington State announced this afternoon the game this fall against California has been moved. Instead of playing the Bears on Nov. 20, as originally announced (the Saturday before Thanksgiving week), the Cougars will now play them on Nov. 6, a date that was a bye in the previous schedule. Here’s the negative. The Cougars will play 11 consecutive weeks without a break. They will have two weeks off before the Apple Cup. The positive? No game in Pullman the week before the Thanksgiving break. You tell me if the payoff is worth it. … Now on to basketball. But it’s going to be short. What is there to say? The stakes are obvious. Win and move on. Lose and go home. That wasn’t the case the first two times these teams met, both officially won by the University of Oregon. … As an aside, I heard Mychal Thompson on the radio when I was driving today. His tag-team partner wanted to know the over/under on the crowd tonight. Mychal’s answer: 3,500, of which 3,243 will be members of the Thompson family. He also said the Cougars travel well. Do they? We’ll see tonight. … The Cougars are going to try to do two things tonight defensively. They are going to do their best to crowd Tajuan Porter and make him bounce it. And they are going to play the old-school pack on everyone else, making it seem to Oregon they are no driving lanes available. … Offensively, WSU just fine-tuned what it did in Eugene, with a few wrinkles on the zone offense with an eye on getting more touches for both posts, DeAngelo Casto down low and either Marcus Capers or Nik Koprivica at the high. … Let’s keep it simple. Tighten up the d, hit a few shots, move on. Make sense? … Mike Montgomery is here, getting ready to watch his Thursday opponent.

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• That’s it for now. We’ll be back at halftime. Until then …