How WSU – featuring eight international players – used an overseas trip to build bonds both on, off the court

PULLMAN – Ri Vavers had to stifle a small grin. He was sitting at a table at media day for the West Coast Conference, where his Washington State team is playing its second and final season as an affiliate member, and he had a confession to make.

He wasn’t a fan of paella.

“Just because of the strong seafood taste it had,” said Vavers, a junior wing.

Earlier this year, Vavers and the Cougars tried the dish because it’s a staple in Spain, the home country of assistant coach Pedro Garcia Rosado. Over the summer, the team even got the chance to visit the country in person, part of an overseas tour that everyone involved says brought players and coaches together.

The interesting rub is that that international flair is nothing new to this year’s WSU team. In fact, it runs central to the Cougars’ identities. Eight players on this team hail from outside the United States: Vavers is from Latvia, forward Simon Hildebrandt is from Canada, guard Adria Rodriguez is from Spain, wing Emmanuel Ugbo is from the Netherlands, guard Tomas Thrastarson is from Iceland, guard Brunel Madzou and wing Eemeli Yalaho are from Finland and forward ND Okafor is from Ireland.

“I think the way that our staff coaches, it’s great, and it can go both ways,” WSU coach David Riley said. “If you have a bunch of people from all over the world that have different styles, and they’re trying to go play one specific style for, ‘this is how we do things,’ that could be a bad thing. But I think the way we coach, we try to give the players a lot of room to lead and make decisions out there. They’ve seen things from a lot of different perspectives. They played at really high levels, and so I think all that experience and all that knowledge is kinda coming together to make us a really unique team.”

Headed into Riley’s second season at the helm of WSU’s program, the coach had to reshape the roster. By the time last season ended and spring arrived, the Cougars had lost their entire starting five, including three defections via the transfer portal. Two others, forwards Ethan Price and Dane Erikstrup, saw their eligibility expire. So Riley and his assistants hit the recruiting trail to find replacements.

The players that coaches brought in don’t just look talented and versatile. They also have global experience, bringing knowledge from their years of basketball in their home countries to Pullman, where the Cougars will try to build on last year’s 19-15 season. The good news for the Cougars: Their international players don’t just know about local foods. They’ve also spent years battling their contemporaries back home.

Take the case of Ugbo, a transfer from Boise State. After switching from soccer to basketball at age 14, he spent the 2017-18 season playing for his local team, Netherlands-based CBV Binnenland, before joining BC Triple Threat, which is about an hour outside of his hometown of Barendrecht. After two seasons of action with that club, Ugbo moved on to play for the Orange Lions Academy, which is associated with Basketball Nederland, the governing body of basketball in the Netherlands.

In 2021, Ugbo made his professional debut with German team Riesen Ludwigsburg, where he won most improved player honors after his first season. In 2022, Ugbo played for the U20 Netherlands men’s national basketball team.

“I feel like the American game is very dependent on athleticism, 1 v. 1,” Ugbo said. “There (back home), it’s a ‘solve it as a team’ type of thing. I feel like we do a good job here at Washington State of trying to play like a team and trying to solve it as a team, and not resort to 1-on-1.”

But on this WSU team, honors for most international experience go to Rodriguez, who may well slot in as the Cougars’ starting point guard. A three-year veteran of Lucentum Alicante, a team in the Spanish second division, Rodriguez played 34 games last season, averaging 8.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.4 steals. He shot 52% inside the arc and 38% on 3-pointers, his best 3-point-shooting game coming in a 3-for-5 effort.

Scoring in double figures 15 times last season, Rodriguez played 21 minutes per game in a key rotational role for Alicante, which finished the year with a 13-21 record. He had multiple games with five or more rebounds, including one in which he posted eight .

In fact, when WSU traveled to Europe this summer for the team trip, Rodriguez had to veer off. He joined the team on the trip’s first leg, a stop in London, but when the Cougars flew to Malaga, Spain, Rodriguez flew to Madrid. That’s where he played for the Spanish national team in an exhibition tournament, competing on the “B squad,” a selection of young, rising Spanish players mixed with experienced veterans in a four-team, two-day event.

That type of experience runs up and down the resumes of WSU’s players from around the world. Will that help the Cougars finish higher than sixth in the WCC, where they were picked in the preseason poll? Only time will tell – but maybe it’ll help to find a pregame meal that Vavers likes better.