How has WSU turned things around recently? Look no further than rebounding
PULLMAN – Slowly but surely, a wide grin washes across the face of Eemeli Yalaho, who has played a key role in Washington State’s recent turnaround. On a Thursday afternoon, the Cougars are shooting around as they begin practice, putting up shots and chatting with each other. They’ve won five of their last six games. They’re up.
Off to the side sits Yalaho, the 6-foot-8 soft-spoken forward who has made a habit of ripping down rebounds like a man possessed. He is informed of one fascinating statistic: Seventeen games into the season, WSU ranks No. 4 nationally in preventing offensive rebounds. The Cougars allow opponents to grab offensive boards on only 23% of their possessions. Only three teams in the country have been better.
It may have been news to Yalaho, but it doesn’t come as a total shock. In order to turn around their rotten start to the season, the Cougars dug their heels in on defense. They held Eastern Washington to only 63 points. Mercer to 78. Portland to 62. Seattle U to 69, albeit in a loss. Then WSU limited LMU to 76 points and Oregon State to 67 on Sunday evening in Spokane, where the Cougs’ defense hit a few gears it hadn’t yet seen this season.
At the heart of that effort has been rebounding, specifically on the defensive end. The Cougars are holding opponents to one shot, at least most of the time. Without multiple cracks at it, opponents can’t score as much, and WSU can run in transition. It all runs together for coach David Riley’s team.
“We’ve emphasized blocking out,” Riley said. “We emphasize going and pursuing the ball. More drills where it’s worse emphasized in practice.”
Those represent changes for Riley’s team, but not seismic shifts. So what’s changed? The short answer is this: The Cougs have installed better defenders on this year’s team. Riley took care to mention that his starting forwards last season, Ethan Price and Dane Erikstrup, are gifted players. Both have gone on to play professionally overseas.
But neither offered the kind of rugged, athletic rim protection that now lives on the Cougs’ roster. Now WSU has Yalaho, who averages a team-best 6.1 rebounds per game. The Cougs are giving more minutes to Okafor, who is grabbing 5.9 rebounds per contest. And they now have transfer wing Emmanuel Ugbo, who is pulling down 3.8 boards per game. That trio has keyed WSU’s transformation on defense and on the glass.
“EY, ND, Emms is a bigger, more formidable front line than Ethan and Dane,” Riley said. “So a huge part of that is recruiting.”
“I think it’s just different guys,” Okafor added. “So last year we had guys who are very offensively gifted, and I think they were very focused on the offensive side. They didn’t really emphasize the defensive side. This year we have a defensive identity. I think that’s what it is, just personnel changes and stuff like that.”
Turns out, the Cougars didn’t just usher in this change by landing several big forwards in the portal last spring. The way Riley sees it, they did it by bringing in more versatile guards, too.
An example Riley provided centers around former guard Nate Calmese, who transferred to Wake Forest last year. Like many of his teammates that year, Calmese was a phenomenal scorer, and he almost singlehandedly won WSU a couple games. But for reasons both mental and physical, Calmese wasn’t as natural a defender, wasn’t as committed on that end.
It was clear to Riley, but so was something else: Calmese wasn’t entirely adept at navigating screens. So to cover for that deficiency, Riley and assistant coach George Galanopoulos – who primarily focuses on defense – decided to be more aggressive on ball screens. In those situations, the Cougs would put two defenders on the ball, which forced the ball-handler to give it up, which is what Riley was looking for.
The drawback was that it put the team in rotation, forcing players to scramble in 4-on-3 scenarios. That didn’t just make it easier for opponents to score. It also made it easier for them to grab offensive rebounds. Last season, WSU gave up offensive boards on nearly 34% of possessions, which ranked No. 331 nationally – of 364 teams.
That’s a big reason why, after last season ended, Riley and the Cougars knew they had to upgrade in the portal. They did so in their frontcourt, but they also accomplished it in their backcourt, where guards like Jerone Morton and Adria Rodriguez have used their long wingspans to disrupt ball-handlers. More important, they’re good enough defenders to avoid putting two on the ball, leaving bigs like Okafor and Yalaho around the basket to gobble up rebounds.
“We don’t do any specific rebounding drills,” Ugbo said, “but we just do a lot of playing and a lot of defensive drills. Obviously a defensive possession ends when you rebound. That’s when you finish the possession. So coaches always talk about finishing possessions. That’s very important. That’s also a lot of times on the scout, when we play other teams – ‘make sure we finish possessions against this team, they want to get o-boards.’ ”
The Cougs may do drills, but Riley prefers to keep things live, in scrimmages and game situations. He prefers a style called CLA, constraint-led approach. In this approach, coaches design practice environments with specific limitations – whether it be reduced space, altered rules, etc. – to force players to solve problems and improve at particular parts of their games.
The philosophy is sweeping the NBA, in particular teams like the Miami Heat and the Cleveland Cavaliers. It’s unclear how much college basketball has followed suit, but it’s at least made its way to Pullman, where these Cougars are using it to become rebounding mavens, turning around their season.
“Repping out the block out is not what’s gonna get you better,” Riley said. “It’s more like, OK, you know the technique? Cool. Well, try to apply it in a live game, where you actually have to compete. So that’s how we try to do a lot of our teaching, basically since I’ve been a head coach. It’s one more about emphasizing things in live play, more so than specific drills.”