Ace Glass converts game-winning and-one, sending WSU to 78-76 rollercoaster win over LMU

PULLMAN – Somewhere outside the Washington State locker room, as the team entered the tunnel for halftime against LMU, David Riley pulled Ace Glass aside.

Glass had not enjoyed a good half. He had scored just two points on three shots. More importantly, he lost a pair of turnovers, both on account of a loose handle. The Cougars erased an early deficit to take a two-point lead into the intermission, but as his freshman campaign unfolds, Glass needed to give his team more in the second half.

So Riley told Glass, It’s not your talent, your ability to score that’s gotten you to this point. It’s your ability to work through adversity.

“Every time he’s hit a wall,” Riley said, “he’s burst through it.”

If Glass had burst through walls of adversity earlier this season, he shattered them Friday to push WSU across the finish line in a 78-76 win at Beasley Coliseum.

Glass provided the go-ahead and-one in the final seconds. The Cougars trailing by one with 15 seconds left, Glass used some momentum from the top of the key to take his defender off the dribble, got a step and put his layup high off the glass, enough to avoid the shot-blocker Jalen Shelley, who was called for a foul. The ball fell through the net. Glass exchanged chest bumps with teammates.

“I’m just happy,” said Glass, whose team secured the final stop on the other end at the buzzer. “Last game was a little rough. So this one was a great one to win. Just get some happiness, some joy from everybody, always a good thing.”

“They threw a punch at first,” said WSU wing Ri Vavers, who led the team with 17 points on five triples. “I guess we weren’t ready at first, and then got into a timeout and we got it together. I mean, WCC games are tough. Every single conference game is tough, so we just can’t let that slip away, and I think we got it together.”

It’s the fourth win in five games for WSU, which got a team-best 17 points from Vavers. Guard Jerone Morton tallied 15 points and forward ND Okafor paired 14 points with nine rebounds, giving him four double-digit scoring outings in his last five games.

That helped the Cougars (7-9, 2-1 WCC) emerge on top of a rollicking affair. They yielded a career-high 28 points to LMU wing Jan Vide, who helped his group bolt to a 15-2 lead to open the game. The Cougars’ deficit swelled as wide as 14 moments later when they gave up another open triple. Riley stormed onto the court as he called timeout, furious with a blown coverage.

“There’s been games where they hit shots and it’s tough luck. This was not one of those games,” Riley said. “We made errors and we weren’t ready to go. We were overthinking a little offensively and defensively, just moving quicksand a little bit, not ready to guard. I think that comes from experience. First conference home game. Guys feeling it out. We’ve had some good starts, too.”

Instead, thanks to an offensive barrage and sharper defense, the Cougars forced this one to come down to the wire. After taking a lead as big as 54-44, which came on back-to-back triples from Glass and Vavers, the hosts almost let go of the rope again. The Lions slowly chipped away at the Cougs’ lead .

In the last three minutes, LMU used a mini 5-0 surge to take a 71-70 lead, which came on the back of a Glass turnover that led to two free throws. Glass made up for it on the next trip, connecting on a fadeaway jumper on the baseline to give WSU a 72-71 lead. WSU forward Eemeli Yalaho then made 1 of 2 free throws, pushing the Cougars lead to two with about 80 seconds to play.

WSU had to parry another blow. LMU guard Rodney Brown Jr. canned a wide-open 3 from the wing, good for a 74-73 lead with about a minute left. On the other end, Okafor converted around the basket, only for the Lions to respond with two free throws from Vide.

That set the stage for Glass to take over. He did that, sure, sending WSU into Friday’s game against Oregon State in Spokane with a surge of momentum. But the way Riley sees it, Glass also cleared another hurdle in a roller-coaster freshman season, jumping high enough to see the next ones coming – and maybe leap over those, too.

“We’re a tough team at this point,” Riley said. “We’ve been through a really, really hard preseason. We’ve been through some big time runs that we faced. You go back to the Maui Invitational, you go back to playing down at USC, some really hard games that we played.

“I think our guys learned how to weather those storms and what it takes to get the momentum back.”