After a disappointing season, which ended early after six games, Cedric Coward will reportedly be transferring from WSU.
According to Jeff Goodman, Coward’s agent Todd Ramasar informed Field of 68 that Coward would be hitting the portal.
“Senior guard Cedric Coward has entered the portal with a “do not contact” tag and will also test the NBA Draft process,” wrote Goodman on X.
The NBA could be an option for Coward, who came to WSU to follow coach David Riley from Eastern. Many scouts, including Nathan Grubel of draft deeper, believe that Coward has first round potential.
“Health willing, Cedric Coward is a first-round caliber NBA Draft prospect,” writes Grubel.
Coward was the Cougars leading scorer through six games, when he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. He was averaging 17.7 points, 7 rebounds and 3.7 assists before going down.
In 2023-24 with Eastern, the six-foot-six-inch guard played in 32 games, averaging 15.4 points, 6.7 rebounds and 1.7 assists. He was named to the WCC preseason team heading into the 2024-25 season, and was expected to be the leader of the WSU offense.
Coward is the fifth member of the men’s basketball team to enter the transfer portal, joining LeJuan Watts, Isaiah Watts, Nate Calmese and Marcus Wilson.
Before he left, Coward did show one final act of goodwill to his staff at WSU, gifting his coaching staff with custom shoes on March 28th. Posted to the Basketball Team’s X account is the video of Coward delivering custom hand-painted Nike Dunk Low Retros to everyone on the WSU basketball staff.
Riley praised Coward throughout the season for his leadership despite being injured.
“I think we lost some competitive fire in our practices,” said Riley.
However, he said Coward was still helping teammates throughout the year, and even acting like an extra coach at times on the bench.
With Coward officially slated to leave, WSU will need to replace it’s entire starting five for the second year in a row.
