Looking back at Arizona

Looking back at Arizona

It’s rivalry week at Washington State and the Cougars will try to sweep the regular-season series with the Huskies for the first time since the 2010-11 season. But first we have to put yesterday’s game to bed.

We’ve already covered it fairly extensively with our game story , a column from John Blanchette and even a blog post from Vince Grippi, who took a trip down the memory lane known as US 195.

But there’s still some more to take away from yesterday’s game so let’s take a look.

— First off, it wasn’t a bad game for the Cougars because they couldn’t keep up with Arizona. As I pointed out in this morning’s blog post , the Wildcats have four starters that were considered five-star recruits by Scout.com, which is four more than the Cougars have signed since Scout began keeping track in 2002.

So while the Cougars were physically outmatched by the Wildcats, that was to be expected. The problem is that when the going got tough WSU wilted instead of rising to the challenge. If the Cougars had been tougher than UA and countered their opponent’s athleticism with their own physicality they might not have outrebounded the Wildcats, but they probably would not have collected only t hree of the game’s first 16 rebounds, or trailed in the category 30-9 at halftime.

The Cougars failed to rise up in the mental game even more than the physical game, and the sheer scope of 53-19 halftime deficit was due to an inability to make the routine plays that could have kept the game somewhat respectable, not an inability to make the superhuman plays that could have triggered an upset. WSU was continually lost on screens and gave up plays – the alley-oop to Brandon Ashley on an inbounds, for one – that any team could have run against the addle-brained Cougars on Sunday.

— Ike Iroegbu continued to struggle to finish shots near the rim, missing all four of his shots on Sunday. This is a fairly recent problem for Iroegbu, who 52.4 two-point field goal percentage still leads the team. It’s also a big improvement from last season, when Iroegbu made just 38 percent of his shots inside the arc.

But having Iroegbu drive to the basket has been one of WSU’s best ways to create good scoring opportunities so the offense will be hampered as long as he continues to struggle in that area.

Ernie Kent was asked afterwards about whether or not Iroegbu’s misses are mostly mental. He replied:

“I would say yes, more so physical. Because, obviously he’s gifted enough to get there and get to the basket and everything, but he’s not played well. We’ve got to get him back on track again because we’re going to need him next weekend and obviously to have any opportunity to close this year on a really, really positive note.”

— Hollis-Jefferson was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week after averaging 17 points, 9.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.5 steals in wins over Washington and WSU. Against the Cougars Jefferson scored 17 points by making 8 of 9 shots (though just 1 of 6 free throws) and brought down 10 rebounds.

Some notes from the game:

— Prior to the Oregon game, Dexter Kernich-Drew had not led the team in scoring once this season. He has now led the team in scoring for three consecutive games.

— Kernich-Drew made a career-high 6 3-point field goals against the Wildcats and is averaging 4.7 made 3-pointers over the last three games. He is now hitting 52.5 percent from behind the arc in Pac-12 games.

— Josh Hawkinson went without a double-double in a Pac-12 series for the first time this year.

— The Beasley Coliseum crowd of 5,331 was the largest of the year.

And some quotes from the game:

Arizona’s T.J. McConnell: “Washington State had a very off first half. They played a lot better in the second half, like we thought they would.”

DaVonté Lacy comparing Arizona and Gonzaga: “They’re both really, really good. Probably going to compete for a national championship this year. I just think they’re two different teams. Arizona has the athletes whereas Gonzaga’s more skilled and methodical in their approach with their big men. But Arizona’s athletes and when you put athletes with talent that work hard, then you get what Arizona has. It’s going to be interesting to see how far both teams go but they’re both great programs.”

Kent on moving past this loss: “You just move the game, you don’t get too up, you don’t get too down, you just get ready for the next one. And it’s more important for us just to find ourselves and get back on our games again this week because Washington, I believe they’ve lost seven in a row. This is a rivalry game – you throw records out the window.

The energy that goes into this, we’ll get a completely different team over here very similar to when Cal came over here and kind of found themselves and got rolling on us. We need to make sure we’re ready to play in a big rival game, we’ll take the week to get ready, we won’t have a hangover from this game. It’s more about doing what we need to do to make sure we’re playing well.