As WSU regroups from four-game skid, Cougars trying to get healthy ahead of road test against Oregon State

PULLMAN – On Saturday morning, hours before Washington State was set to take on San Francisco on the road, Nate Calmese relayed a message to athletic trainer Hailey Haukeli.

“I don’t know if I can play today,” Calmese told Haukeli, who attends every game.

Calmese was feeling sick enough that he didn’t feel up to taking the court for the 7 p.m. tipoff. He hadn’t eaten in 24 hours, not since WSU dropped a road contest to Pacific on Thursday, and he was throwing up off and on. He wasn’t sure if he would attend shootaround, set for around 10 a.m.

Head coach David Riley encouraged Calmese to attend shootaround, to try and sweat out whatever was bugging him. Calmese said “it was hard,” but he went, only to find he still wasn’t feeling well afterward. That’s about when he and other team officials decided to get Calmese an IV with fluids and nutrients.

“Got some … I don’t even know what they put in me,” Calmese said, “but it had me feeling good for a little bit. I think that’s what really helped.”

By the time tipoff rolled around, Calmese was feeling around 15-20% healthy, he said Tuesday. The Cougars lost 75-51, their fourth consecutive setback. Calmese sat for the final 12 minutes of the game, putting up uncharacteristically few shot attempts, only six in 20 minutes.

But Calmese wanted to push through all that and get on the court.

“Just what happened last game, the beef that we have with their coach after the game, just the way the last was ended,” Calmese said, referring to the way San Francisco coach Chris Gerlufsen took issue with the Cougars taking a late shot with the game out of reach.

“Just to get back on track, I wanted to do that for my guys. They need me, and I need them, and I wanted to be there for them. So I was gonna do whatever it takes to get out there.”

As WSU (15-9, 5-6 West Coast Conference) tries to end the four-game losing streak on the road against Oregon State (16-7, 6-4) on Thursday night, the Cougars are also trying to get healthy. Some kind of bug is running through the team, affecting several players, not just Calmese.

It’s part of playing basketball in the winter, Riley said, but it’s coming at a tricky time for the Cougars. They have been swept by Pacific, whose only two WCC wins have come over WSU, and the same turnover issues that have plagued them all season haunted them against San Francisco. The Cougars had 18 turnovers , including 15 in the first half.

WSU, which ranks near the bottom of the country in turnovers per game, has not found ways to solve that . The Cougars might be getting more creative this week. In practice, Calmese said, coaches are cracking down on turnovers.

“Just gotta be more disciplined,” said Calmese, whose team is averaging 15.2 turnovers per game, No. 347 nationally. “We gotta be better. They’re all controllable things, things that we’ve been talking about all year. I think now we’re to the point where we can’t talk about it no more – we just gotta do it.

“I think that’s what we’re gonna start doing now. We’re starting putting things into practice where we have three balls, if you turn over the ball three times, you gotta run. So I think it’s gonna start to show in these games. And if you start turning over the ball, I think coach is gonna take you out. So I think it’s gonna become more of an emphasis for our team.”

At his previous stop, Riley’s Eastern Washington teams did turn it over plenty, too – the Eagles hovered in the 300s in national turnover percentage rankings – but they didn’t lose much. In fact, this is only the second four-game losing streak in Riley’s time as a head coach, including the Eagles’ four straight losses against Power Five foes to open last year’s schedule.

Riley has never faced a skid like this, not against conference opponents. As the Cougars get ready for their third consecutive road game, it’s prompting him to think back to his time at EWU, to draw on the experience he gained in Cheney.

“We were a little bit overmatched,” Riley said of the previous skid, “but we really had the understanding that if we’re gonna beat these teams and win like we wanna win, we have to be a connected group, and we gotta do things our way, not my way.

“And I think our guys have tried to do that all year, but the rubber hasn’t really hit the road until now, and I think we’re understanding the importance of that a little bit more.”