Can WSU salvage a rotten end to the season with a run in the WCC tournament?

PULLMAN – No matter how his Washington State team plays, if the Cougars cruise to a win or slog through a loss, David Riley tends to sound about the same afterward. He may not be a flawless coach, but when he talks about how things unfolded, he’s usually pretty even-keeled.

“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 after his group’s latest outing, a road setback to Pepperdine over the weekend. “And we gotta finish this the right way. It is an opportunity for us to make sure that happens. There’s a couple days now to get our minds right and make sure we do this the right way.”

By the right way, Riley meant the WCC Tournament, where eighth-seeded WSU is set to take on the winner of 12th-seeded Pepperdine and ninth-seeded Portland at 6 p.m. Friday on ESPN+. At the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, the Cougars will get a chance to put their losing ways behind them – they’ve dropped six of their last seven games – and maybe make a surprise run through the bracket.

If WSU wins on Friday, the group will advance to Saturday’s third round, meeting fifth-seeded San Francisco. Those teams have played only once this season, which came in the Bay Area, where the Dons ended the game with nine straight points to earn a narrow win.

No matter the opponent, when WSU (12-19, 7-11 WCC) takes the court on Friday, the squad will be looking for only its second win against a Division I opponent in a game played outside the state of Washington this season. The Cougars’ only win in that category came in late December over Portland, where the visiting Cougs mounted a furious comeback in the game’s final moments to secure a victory.

Otherwise, Riley’s team has endured all kinds of struggles away from home this season. The Cougars have notched a total of three wins in venues not named Beasley Coliseum – against Eastern Washington at the Spokane Arena in November, against D-II Chaminade in Maui later in the same month and then against Portland.

So when we talk about WSU’s prospects in this conference tournament, the opponent may be a secondary concern. The primary one might be the location.

Can the Cougars turn that much around this weekend? If they match up against Pepperdine, which made a stunning run to last year’s tournament semifinals as the No. 9 seed, their minds might be fresher. On Saturday in Malibu, WSU turned in its most forgettable showing all year, falling behind by as much as 20 as the last-place Waves largely cruised to a win, the Cougs’ last-gasp rally notwithstanding.

In that one, WSU shot only 39% from the field against a Pepperdine team that ranks second-to-last in the conference in shooting defense. The Cougars lost 14 turnovers, which the Waves turned into 17 points, and the visitors led only once: A 3-2 advantage in the opening minutes of the game. From there, it was mostly all Pepperdine.

If Washington State does indeed get Pepperdine, the Cougars would do well to find ways to limit 7-foot center Stefan Cicic, who posted career highs with 23 points and 10 rebounds against WSU, pulling down eight offensive boards. A redshirt freshman, Cicic had begun to play more lately due to the absence of starting center Danilo Dozic, but those numbers meant huge increases from his recent games.

Can the Cougs keep him away from the basket this time around? That would largely fall to their top two bigs, Eemeli Yalaho and ND Okafor, the latter of whom earned an All-WCC honorable mention nod earlier this week.

“For whatever reason, we were in those help positions where he was able to get those O-boards,” Riley said in a postgame radio interview. “We did not have any help the helper, or we did not have anyone cracking back to support our bigs when they did help. There’s a few reasons why that happens.”

The Waves might have the conference’s lowest seed, but they still may wind up advancing to play the Cougars this weekend. Pepperdine has already topped Portland twice this season, 67-63 at home and 95-87 on the road, turning in two of their best games of the season in those contests.

Still, there’s a reason why this cliche saying has taken hold in so many corners of the sports ecosystem: It’s hard to beat a team three times. If the Waves fail to do so, they’ll set up a third meeting between WSU and Portland, whom the Cougars have beaten twice this season.

With about 10 minutes to go in the clash in Portland, WSU fell behind by eight on a triple from Pilots’ 7-footer Jermaine Ballisager Webb, only to follow with a game-changing 12-0 run. Moments later, the Cougs scored another nine straight, not only putting the game away – but showing the kind of mental fortitude that has often eluded them this season.

In the meeting at WSU, the Cougars didn’t have many issues putting away the Pilots in a 104-74 win. Portland guard Joel Foxwell, who joined WSU’s Ace Glass in narrowly missing out on winning the WCC Freshman of the Year award, tallied 21 points. But he needed 20 shots to get there, and the Cougs sunk 16 triples, winning with ease.

Will that Washington State team show up this weekend? Or will it be the one that has looked entirely different in other venues? The odds may be stacked against Riley’s team when it comes to making a deep tournament run, but for the sake of optics and general momentum, the Cougars would be well-served to win a game or two.

“This is important that we go finish this the right way,” Riley said. “It’s a really, really disappointing road trip, but we got to go finish in Vegas the right way.”