David Riley looking for answers as WSU ends regular season with 88-79 road loss to Pepperdine: ‘I don’t know what to say’

PULLMAN – Whenever this Washington State season comes to an end, when the players say their goodbyes and clean out their lockers and coaches start planning for the offseason, they might regret one theme above all.

The Cougars finished the regular season with exactly one Division-I win outside the state of Washington.

WSU sealed that much with an 88-79 road loss to Pepperdine on Saturday evening, ending the regular season with a loss to the West Coast Conference’s last-place team in a game that wasn’t that close. For the game, the Cougars shot only 39% from the floor, their offense languishing against a Waves team that entered allowing a tick under 80 points per game.

The Cougs’ one regular-season win outside Washington came in a road win over Portland in late December. Their final record in the regular season: 12-19, 7-11 WCC.

“It’s a really hard result to comprehend,” WSU coach David Riley said in a postgame radio interview. “They out-toughed us. We looked timid on offense. In the first half, they kinda dared us into some shots, and we weren’t able to get rhythm. We weren’t able to have the mental toughness to pass up the good for great.”

WSU will be the No. 8 seed in next week’s WCC tournament in Las Vegas, playing its first game on Friday against the winner of the game between No. 9 Portland and No. 12 Pepperdine at the Orleans Arena.

Freshman guard Ace Glass tallied a team-best 22 points for the Cougars, who led only once in the game, a 3-2 advantage in the opening minutes. From that point on, the visitors were fighting an uphill battle, falling behind by as many as 20 when the Waves parlayed a turnover into an easy breakaway dunk with about eight minutes to go.

WSU, which connected on only 10 of 33 shots from beyond the arc, was largely undone around the basket. The Cougs gave up 17 offensive rebounds, which the Waves turned into 14 points. Pepperdine piled up 50 points in the paint, dwarfing WSU’s total of 32. The Waves bullied the Cougars with a combination of forward Stefan Cicic, who posted a career-high 23 points and 10 rebounds, and guard Aaron Clark, who added 20 points.

The Cougars made a push in the final moments, drawing as close as eight on a steal and dunk from guard Adria Rodriguez, cutting the Waves’ lead to 81-73 with about 50 seconds to play. But because they couldn’t generate any consistent offense all night, it was too little and much too late for the Cougs, who also got 15 points and 10 rebounds from ND Okafor.

It’s a confounding result for WSU, which entered as 7.5-point favorites in many sportsbooks. The Waves have shown promise this season, but they’ve spent the entire conference season at the bottom of the standings, entering Saturday’s game with only eight wins. Heck, the Cougars earned an easy double-digit win over the Waves in the teams’ first meeting in Pullman earlier this season.

But that’s the way this season has gone for WSU, which has looked like another team altogether on the road. The Cougars end the regular season with a 1-11 record against D-I opponents outside the state of Washington. They did take down Eastern Washington in Spokane, and they rallied to beat Division-II Chaminade in Maui, but the big picture does not paint a fond portrait of this WSU season.

For example, take this road trip. The Cougars entered this week with two final regular-season games, against LMU and Pepperdine, with a chance to climb the conference standings and potentially earn the tournament’s No. 4 seed, which comes with a bye to the quarterfinals. With an opportunity to end a losing streak and clean up some optics headed into next season, WSU still had plenty to play for.

Instead, the Cougars lost both games, falling to as low as the No. 8 seed for the conference tournament. They’ll head into the tournament with losses in six of their last seven games.

“I don’t know what to say,” Riley said.

On Saturday, the Cougars experienced many of the same problems that have haunted them all season. They couldn’t match the physicality of the seven-foot Cicic, who pulled down eight offensive rebounds, often beating Okafor on the boards. And they lost too many careless turnovers, especially those of the live-ball variety, making things easier on the Waves’ offense, which produced 15 fastbreak points.

The uncharacteristic part was the Cougars’ shooting, at least from outside. Wing Ri Vavers, who entered shooting a remarkable 46% from beyond the arc, connected on 3 of 8 shots from beyond the arc. Glass sank just 2 of 9 shots from deep. Eemeli Yalaho went 2 for 6. Guard Tomas Thrastarson, playing his fourth game back after a 12-game injury absence, hit 1 of 5.

One sequence that summed up this trend best: In the final three minutes, the Cougars got three straight wide-open looks at 3-pointers. Here are the results: Glass miss, Vavers miss, Thrastarson miss. That just about derailed WSU’s hopes at a comeback.

The Cougars can still make some noise in Las Vegas, where last season ninth-seeded Pepperdine made a surprise run to the semifinals. But if they’ve shown anything this season, it’s this: Count on them away from home at your own risk.

“I care a lot about those guys in the locker room, and there’s a lot of love in there for each other,” Riley said. “We gotta finish this the right way. It is an opportunity for us to make sure that happens. And there’s a couple days now to get our minds right and make sure we do this the right way.”