Another slow start costs WSU in 85-69 loss to Davidson, dropping Cougars to 0-2 on season

In a season-opening loss earlier this week, Washington State coach David Riley lamented his group’s slow start. The Cougars picked up the intensity as the game unfolded, but by the n, they didn’t have enough time to avoid falling to nearby Idaho in an upset.

WSU players were “thinking about all these other things that don’t matter,” Riley said, indicating he wanted his guys to “keep the main thing the main thing.”

But the same issues plagued the Cougars in an 85-69 road loss to Davidson on Friday night, dropping Riley’s team to 0-2 in his second season at the helm of the program. WSU, which has yet to hold a lead this season, trailed by double digits fewer than five minutes into the game at Belk Arena in Davidson, North Carolina. The Wildcats would lead by as many as 23.

“Early on, they hit us with a punch,” Riley said in a postgame radio interview, “and I don’t think, for whatever reason, we were ready to execute. I think we were ready to play hard, and they took advantage of some of our aggression and came out with a good punch. They were able to kinda stop all of our runs. Every time we got a little momentum, they hit a big 3.”

Transfer wing Emmanuel Ugbo scored a team-high 16 points for the Cougars, who actually matched the Wildcats’ scoring in the second half, 45-45. But it was a sluggish opening to the game that doomed WSU, which sank 6 of 21 shots from deep and lost 16 turnovers. The visitors had trouble generating any type of consistent offense, shooting just 40% from the floor. Through two games this season, they have connected on just 12 of 49 triples, which is only 24%.

But WSU has had just as much trouble engineering stops on defense. For the game, Davidson shot 57% from the field. The Wildcats also hit 12 of 24 from beyond the arc, becoming the second straight team to burn the Cougars from deep. Earlier this week, Idaho buried 11 shots from distance.

The season remains young, but it’s becoming clear the Cougars can ill afford to keep permitting these kinds of games on defense. They often closed out too hard on Wildcat shooters, which opened up drive-and-kick opportunities, which the hosts cashed in on. Two Davidson players, freshman Devin Brown and redshirt freshman Hunter Adam, knocked down three triples each.

“They were backdooring, and they were cutting,” Riley said. “They were drawing two and kinda shaking guys loose. They got two or three really easy looks early, and I felt like after that, we actually did a better job. But the issue is, when you got a team like Davidson that can really shoot it, and you got a lot of really good shooters – if you give them open looks that early, they’re gonna make you pay and get hot and it’s a lot harder to guard them.”

Another trend emerging for WSU has to do with starting point guard Adria Rodriguez, a senior from Spain. In his first two games of American college basketball, he has totaled just three points on seven shots. It’s clear he provides a valuable presence for the Cougars, getting their offense organized and dishing out assists, but he hasn’t given his team much offense. He doesn’t look like a very enthusiastic shooter.

WSU nearly negated that issue earlier this week thanks to a monster outing from freshman guard Ace Glass, who tallied 17 points against Idaho, lacing several mid-range jumpers, looking for his shot when opportunities came his way. He didn’t enjoy the same luck against Davidson, which held him to five points on six shots. Glass played 19 minutes. Rodriguez logged 16.

Still, many of the same problems have followed the Cougars around, no matter which of those two is in the game. Even with the return of junior wing Rihards Vavers, who missed Monday’s game recovering from an offseason shoulder operation, WSU’s offense couldn’t sustain enough runs to climb back into the game. In his first game back, Vavers went scoreless in nine minutes, missing a pair of 3-pointers.

Can the Cougs get back on track? They certainly have time to do so. Their next game is a home matchup on Monday against St. Thomas, which opened with a blowout loss to Saint Mary’s earlier this week. WSU might also have a rising star in Ugbo, the only Coug to score in double figures against Davidson. He added five rebounds, a block and a steal, and hit one of four treys.

A transfer from Boise State, Ugbo started Friday’s game over wing Eemeli Yalaho, a transfer from Texas Tech. Yalaho started in Monday’s season opener. In his first two games at WSU, Yalaho has posted 11 points on 14 shots.

With an emerging Ugbo in the fold, the Cougars can enter the win column next week. But they’ll need to start better. Otherwise, things could go from bad to worse.