WSU about ready to face Wildcats

• Winning the Pac-10 conference this year isn’t going to be easy the way the Huskies are playing – and the way the rest of the conference looks. It seems there just arebt enough good teams in this conference for the Huskies to lose more than three or four games, tops. Even if UW loses here next week, at Arizona and then – really, where else? The Huskies won at USC and UCLA, two of the tougher stops. Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona State just don’t seem to have enough to get them. Even if they stumble, as they did at Stanford, they probably won’t stumble more than once. And they aren’t going to lose at home unless something really strange happens. … That whole section is by way of saying the Cougars have little margin of error. If they want to win, the conference, they have to win tonight and all their home games. It’s just that simple. … The Wildcats are out shooting 105 minutes before game time. They stay in Spokane – at the Davenport – so they probably wanted to make sure they had a large margin of error. … I don’t think the Cougars are going to zone tonight as much as they usually do. The Wildcats have too many good shooters, including Derrick Williams who can bury the 15-20 footer consistently. So I expect them to play UA straight up most of the night, though there’s a chance they start in a zone as kind of a heat check. If Arizona is hot, switch to a man. If not, ride it. We’ll see. … As I wrote last night, Faisal Aden seemed fine yesterday, so my expectation is he’ll play tonight. Which means WSU will have a full compliment of players. But will they all play well at the same time? That’s something I can’t remember happening this season. It has to happen sooner or later, right? … If you are thinking back to last season, when Reggie Moore spent much of both nights in Arizona’s paint, don’t be so certain that will happen again. Last year Nic Wise tried to guard Moore and though Wise was a better offensive player than any point UA has now, he wasn’t the defender of Sean Miller’s dreams. As far as I can tell, the Wildcats are better at defending out front this season, which may make it harder for the WSU offense to carve them up like last year. That’s why the Cougars need everyone to have one of those all-together nights. Play well, play hard and play together. Sounds simple, but for this team, despite its 14-5 mark, it’s been anything but. … Thought about going through the stats, but instead I’ll just link CougCenter and the work done by Craig Powers. Saves me time. Besides, I’m more of a big picture guy anyhow.

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• That’s the big picture, as I see it. You know the drill. We’ll be back at halftime and on Twitter. Until later …