After a tumultuous offseason, basketball is returning to the Palouse this November with many new pieces yet to be seen and many questions waiting to be answered.

After achieving a 22-15 record last year, 11-9 in conference play, the Cougs made a run at the National Invitation Tournament, a tournament played out by the best teams not invited to the NCAA tournament. While many expected the Cougs to take an early trip home, they rose to the occasion and made it all the way to the semifinals in Madison Square Garden with good wins over Santa Clara, SMU and BYU.

Unfortunately, after the NIT tournament success, the Cougs lost some big contributors, most notably star forward Efe Abogidi who signed with the NBA G League Ignite team in hopes of making the NBA. Others left to the transfer portal, graduated, or were sidelined by health issues. 

Coming into 2022, the young team has many new faces, and all are looking to contribute to a continued rise of WSU basketball out of the rough seasons of the 2010s and hopefully into the top of the Pac-12 field.

Of these young players, the most attention lies on sophomore forward Mouhamed Gueye. Standing at 6 feet 11 inches, Gueye hails from Senegal and was a standout for the Cougs right out of the gate, finishing his freshman year on the Pac-12 All-Freshman team with five Freshman of the Week awards. Gueye briefly entered the transfer portal during the offseason but opted to stay at Wazzu.

Coming into this season, Gueye has been voted onto the All-Pac-12 Preseason First Team. Recent Cougs named to the Preseason First Team include now-NBA player CJ Elleby and guard Noah Williams who was one of the transfer losses this off-season.

As the only healthy big returning from last year, Gueye will likely be the foundation of the defense and also seek to increase his offensive output in his second year.

At the Pac-12 Media Day event on Wednesday, Gueye was joined by junior guard TJ Bamba, who is also returning from success last season. Bamba was the Cougs’ best-rated perimeter defender last season and hopes to combine that with improved offense to be a true star for the team this year. While his offensive success was limited early in the season, he scored in double figures for six of the last nine games, shooting 36% from three on the season.

At Media Day, Bamba spoke on his hopes for offensive growth in this new season.

“I feel like it’s my job to lead the group,” Bamba said. “I’ll definitely look forward to taking a jump on the offensive end and be more productive, efficient, showcase my talent.”

Gueye shared the same sentiments about being a leader of a young team and was asked how he felt about being chosen as team captain for this season.

“For me, that means a lot, I mean first of all the coach trusts me, my teammates trust me,” Gueye said. “I gotta show them right, I gotta show them to make the good choice.”

Head coach Kyle Smith also spoke on offensive improvement, but he added another element to the hopes.

“I think we’ve established ourselves in these first three years that we are good defensively and rebounding and that was the emphasis,” Smith said. “We’re gonna have to really make sure we’re good there, I think we’ve made the adjustments, and become better offensively, better perimeter shooting, better passing, better at that piece but we’ve gotta be able to still defend and rebound at the right level.”

All the focus on getting better at scoring is certainly not unfounded. While the Cougs were second in scoring defense last year in the Pac-12, and a respectable fifth in scoring offense, they ranked dead last in the entire conference in field goal percentage. Likewise, they were 10th in assists. While there were certainly excellent aspects of the offense, including being first in offensive rebounds and total three-pointers made, these other stats show room for improvement.

If that improvement happens and the defense stays close to what it was, the Cougs will be a very formidable threat in the Pac-12. The pieces are there and the focus is correct. It will all come down to execution.

The Cougs will look to begin this execution in their season opener against Texas State. Tip-off is at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 7 at Beasley Coliseum.