The Cougars have spent the past season rebuilding around a new coaching staff, and young team; and older players, who have weathered through bleak years, shed bittersweet tears as the season came to close. Burying his head in his jersey, senior guard DaVonté Lacy bid his Cougar uniform farewell yesterday as the Cougars fell to the Golden Bears 84-59 in game one of the Pac-12 tournament.

After showing resilience in battling back from a poor start to the game, WSU (13-18, 7-12 Pac-12) proved no match for California.

For senior guards Lacy and Dexter Kernich-Drew and senior center Jordan Railey, it was likely their final game in a Cougar uniform for the men tasked with helping lead a turnaround for the program.

Head Coach Ernie Kent said in a press conference that he owes a great deal to this year’s senior class.

“I told them that this program, my staff, in particular, we will forever be indebted to what they did for us this year,” Kent said. “Because they did a lot for this team behind the scenes, just by being able to allowing themselves to be transparent and show their strength of character, because it’s outstanding.”

Lacy finished the game with nine points on 4-of-11 shooting and will finish his career with the Cougars as the all-time leader in three-point field goals made and fifth on the all-time scoring list. It was clear that Lacy had lots of emotions running through his head after he was substituted out for the final time in his collegiate career as a Cougar. Kent believes Lacy did everything he could to build this program.

“He (Lacy) stayed at a school, he stayed true to his school,” Kent said. “If anybody deserves to have some success, it was DaVonté Lacy. To me part of the emotion you saw was a young man who loved his teammates, who loved his college experience, and therefore it was very difficult to see that come to an end because that to me epitomizes what a college student-athlete should be about—staying in, staying loyal, staying true blue, and staying at home and trying to build the basketball program. He had an opportunity to leave, and he did not do it.”

Railey scored 12 points and had three rebounds while Kernich-Drew finished with four points.

Sophomore guard Ike Iroegbu led the Cougars with 17 points while sophomore forward Josh Hawkinson registered his 20th double-double of the season with 14 points and 11 rebounds to extend his single-season record. Iroegbu said in the press conference after the game he believes he’s ready to take on a leadership role next season.

“Me and Josh (Hawkinson), us being underclassmen, I feel we learned a lot from our three seniors, Jordan (Railey), Dexter (Kernich-Drew), and DaVonté (Lacy),” Iroegbu said. “They did a good job telling us how to handle on and off the court and Coach Kent instilled confidence in us that we haven’t seen before. So I really appreciate everyone that was around us for this year and can’t wait for next year.”

The loss likely means the end of the season for the Cougars. The Cougars will lose Railey, Lacy and Kernich-Drew, but should retain everyone else in hopes of improving on a 13-18, 7-12 record next season. Hawkinson said in the postgame press conference it was tough to go out the way they did, but are geared towards next season.

“We’ve been working a lot as a unit and growing over this past year,” Hawkinson said. “And we didn’t want it to end this way for our seniors, Dex, DaVonté, and Jordan. But I think we have a strong corps of guys coming back to make a strong run next year.”

The Cougars came out sloppy at the beginning of the first half struggling from the field. Fortunately for WSU, California was unable to pull away and establish a big lead on the Cougars early. Iroegbu got hot in the middle of the half, scoring eight consecutive points for WSU to put them up 18-17 with 7:15 left in the first half. However, that was the last time the Cougars would hold a lead.

California finished the last five minutes of the half on a 13-4 run to go up on WSU 37-26. Wallace scored eight points and had four rebounds in the first half. Kravish did the most damage for the Golden Bears as he finished the half with 10 points and seven rebounds.

Starting the second half, it was evident that this would be California’s day. They started the half 8-of-9 from the field including 2-of-2 from three in the first eight minutes of action. WSU didn’t hit their first three until the six-minute mark. The Golden Bears increased their lead to 20 points at the 10-minute mark and never looked back en route to their first round victory.