Loyalty, patience (and cash): David Riley and WSU basketball deserve better | Ralph Walter

I’m not quite old enough to remember when Jack Friel finished 9-14 in his first season as head basketball coach at Washington State.

So let’s just assume there were plenty of Cougar malcontents, even in those late 1920s, screaming across the Palouse over their bathtub gins that the school needed to rid itself of Friel before the situation got any worse. “Nine wins with this group? Really?”

That’s just how fans are: Emotional, fiercely loyal and often impatient.

Win now or get lost.

And with news breaking earlier this week that coach David Riley would return for a third season with the Cougars, this take might not win over many fans, either – especially in Pullman.

But it was a no-brainer to bring Riley back, and not only because the school would have been on the hook for a reported $2.7 million buyout – though that alone seems obvious for an athletic department that had to get a $20 million emergency transfusion from the university’s operating fund just to stay alive and competitive.

It’s also not because I’ve known Riley since his earliest days coaching at Eastern Washington, and think he’s one of the brightest young basketball minds around.

Or that he actually can recruit and motivate – areas in which he thrived while winning two Big Sky regular-season titles at EWU, and the big reason why Wazzu hired him in the first place.

No, it’s because WSU would have looked absolutely pathetic if it fired its basketball coach after just two seasons, mere months after rightly throwing a collective fit when its football coach bolted the Palouse after one. Remember those “Where’s the loyalty, Jimmy Rogers?” cries?

Well, loyalty runs both ways.

Firing a coach after two seasons, even three, would all but guarantee that WSU basketball would become nothing more than a cash grab and stepping stone for any future hire. No decent coach would trust that the Cougars were committed for the long haul.

In this unprecedented era where cash is king and players can leave at the drop of a dime, it’s time to show some patience and perspective, and find the resources to help Riley and the Cougs succeed in the new Pac-12. Although it’s impossible to confirm in this time of shady NIL bookkeeping, online reports suggest WSU was in the bottom third of the West Coast Conference in funding this past season and will likely start at or near the bottom of the new conference.

It’s always been hard to win in Pullman – even before NIL’s arrival. Outside of a couple of brief instances over the past four decades – a three-year period in the early 1990s with Kelvin Sampson and three years in the late 2000s under Tony Bennett – there hasn’t really been any serious momentum behind the Cougs since George Raveling patrolled the sidelines. And rather than trying to build a lasting basketball culture in Pullman, those legends all decided it was best to move on – Raveling to Iowa, Sampson to Oklahoma and Bennett to Virginia.

What else do these three titans have in common? Rough starts. According to sports-reference.com, Raveling went 14-42 in his first two seasons. Sampson was 23-35 in his first two, 30-57 in his first three. And Bennett? His tenure looks incredible on paper until you realize his first three years as the top assistant to his dad, Dick, produced seasons of 13-16, 12-16 and 11-17.

In his two years, Riley is 31-35 – five wins and one spot behind Dick Bennett for 12th on WSU’s all-time list.

I’m not saying we’ll be renaming Friel Court anytime soon. But he at least deserves a chance to prove himself.

Over the years, the program took major steps backward following the departures of Raveling, Sampson and Bennett. Yet Len Stevens (48-67 from 1983-87), Kevin Eastman (68-79 from 1994-99) and Ken Bone (80-86 from 2009-14) all inherited veteran rosters from their predecessors.

This idea that Riley somehow killed all of the momentum that Kyle Smith created is a little far-fetched.

Smith was terrific in leading the Cougs to the 2024 NCAA Tournament. Still, he was just one game over .500 in three of his five seasons at WSU. And after that NCAA berth, with the move to the WCC looming, he and nearly his entire roster – including future pros Jaylen Wells and Isaac Jones – scattered. The lone holdovers were guards Isaiah Watts and Parker Gerrits.

It’s impossible to build on momentum that disintegrates overnight.

I get the frustration. This season, the Cougs dropped six of their last seven games to finish 12-20. The team couldn’t win on the road. Riley’s offense struggled with costly turnovers, long scoring droughts and inconsistency, while the defense couldn’t get key stops and gave up big leads in several games.

It’s on him and his staff to find solutions to fix those deficiencies.

But the fact that Riley was able to get the 2025 Cedric Coward-less Cougs to the postseason should still carry plenty of weight moving forward. We never got to see those Cougars whole in 2025, but the team still managed to win 19 games – a rare feat in Pullman.

Yes, injuries are a part of the game.

And now, so is money. The lack of it heading into this past season cost Riley the services of Coward – who committed to Duke on his way to the NBA draft lottery – as well as LeJuan Watts, Nate Calmese and Isaiah Watts, who all cashed in on bigger paydays. It’s a good bet other programs are already preparing offers for Ace Glass, ND Okafor, Eemeli Yalaho and Rihards Vavers.

Making a commitment to Riley and his team now could help stem those losses once the transfer portal opens in April.

Look how the mood has shifted since WSU began steering resources toward Kirby Moore, the new football coach who actually wants to be in Pullman.

“Nobody remembers Jimmy Rogers,” school president Betsy Cantwell told “Bald Faced Truth” columnist John Canzano earlier this week. “His name never comes up. The past is forgotten. There’s a real willingness to embrace the future.”

Let’s just hope that includes basketball, too.