In blowout loss to No. 12 Gonzaga, WSU fails to play with right ‘force,’ David Riley says | Analysis
The trouble started early, remarkably early, too early to even exude a veneer of a competitive game. First, less than a minute into Tuesday’s game, Washington State forward Eemeli Yalaho lost the ball. Then, Yalaho threw away another turnover. The Cougars committed yet another turnover, once more of the unforced variety, when fellow forward ND Okafor was called for an obvious traveling violation.
No matter when you tuned into WSU’s 83-53 loss to No. 12 Gonzaga at the Kennel, you had a pretty good chance of seeing something similar. Maybe you saw guards Adria Rodriguez and Parker Gerrits lose the ball out of bounds on a miscommunication. Perhaps you saw Yalaho throw a pick-six to GU wing Emmanuel Innocenti, who threw down a breakaway dunk, or possibly you witnessed one of the several Cougar entry passes that were easily stolen.
That trend never quite escaped WSU, which has now dropped three straight games, and nine in a row to Gonzaga. All told, the visitors gave away 21 turnovers, which turned into 31 points for the Zags, who led by as many as 39. They earned their first double-digit lead of the game before eight minutes had elapsed.
“The guys play hard. That’s one thing I respect about this group,” WSU coach David Riley said. “The effort is there. It’s sometimes placed in the wrong places. I think that it’s a really hard thing to do to have a connected group in an environment like that, where you’re facing really good athletes, and if you make a forced play, they’re gonna make you pay for it. I thought they had a really good gameplan against us that didn’t allow us to create some rhythm offensively or defensively. We just looked a step behind, I think, because of that.”
Wait, effort placed in the wrong places?
“I just think we’re trying to make too many home run plays and on both sides the ball,” Riley explained, “and we gotta rely on connectivity.”
Riley also said he had no update on forward Emmanuel Ugbo, whose suspension has now reached four games. Riley has called it a violation of team rules, but has not elaborated on the reason – or timeline.
Maybe this is the best way to capture the essence of this Washington State loss: Usually in blowouts like these, you can safely say it wasn’t as bad as the scoreboard might suggest. The winner inflates the margin in garbage time, the loser rolls over a tad, things get out of hand. You can ascribe lots of different meanings to a lopsided result, and usually they’re charitable to the losing team.
In a 30-point loss, things might have been worse for WSU.
For one, the Cougars converted a grand total of six field goals in the first half, heading into the break staring at a 48-21 deficit. They committed 11 turnovers in the first stanza. All told, Yalaho committed five turnovers. Guard Ace Glass lost four, as did Rodriguez. Reserve guard Parker Gerrits had three turnovers in 12 minutes.
After the game, Riley made sure to give credit to the Bulldogs, who he said have “really good hands on defense. They swipe at the ball. They do a great job with that.”
“But our offense is built on connecting three or four simple passes together,” Riley said, “or connecting two ball screens or two different actions together, and we weren’t able to do that. Obviously part of that is because of their pressure, and part of that is we were a little bit rushed.”
Still, maybe it is fair to take a closer look at the effort that WSU put on display. The Zags easily got two feet in the paint on ball screens, which the Cougars couldn’t navigate around. Many of the turnovers the visitors committed were entirely unforced: balls thrown out of bounds, travels on audacious drives to the basket, miscommunications on dribble handoffs, passes so easy to read that Gonzaga jumped the lane and streaked the other way for easy baskets.
Plus, GU won the rebounding battle by a convincing 37-21 margin. That included a 10-3 edge on the offensive glass. This is where knowing the Riley parlance comes in handy. He’ll almost always approve of his players’ effort – at least publicly – but he does like to use another word that seems to be squarely adjacent: force. He wants his players to play with force: around the basket, on the glass, on drives.
So when you read his comments on his team’s display in the rebounding department, try substituting the word “force” for “effort.” This quote is about the way the Zags scored one basket after the Cougars made one.
“I need to go watch the film,” Riley said. “I know one of those that was in the first half was us not moving on to the next play. But if we’re crashing with the right kind of force, then I can live with that. But I know for damn sure we weren’t doing that when you get three offensive rebounds. So we weren’t moving on to the next play.”
No. 12 Gonzaga played fine defense in this clobbering of WSU, but that’s what’s so troubling about this result for the Cougars: The Bulldogs didn’t need to. All told, the visitors connected on just 39% of their shots, including 5 of 24 from beyond the arc.
Most concerning for the Cougs was the reality that, even in garbage time of an evisceration, they didn’t establish anything meaningful to take solace in, anything to springboard themselves into next Wednesday’s home game against Pacific. No compelling defensive sequences. No promising baskets from a reserve like Gerrits or forward Simon Hildebrandt. Guard Jerone Morton led the Cougars with 15 points, Ri Vavers followed with 14 and Glass chipped in 12.
But outside of that, WSU didn’t enjoy much to write home about. As Riley and the Cougars try to wring something encouraging out of what’s left of his second season at the program’s helm, they’ll need to limit turnovers. Perhaps most importantly, they’ll have to play with more force – whatever meaning Riley gives that word.