The Cougars secure a conference victory against the Seattle Redhawks in a slow slugfest on Wednesday night.
On a night all athletes of Washington state showed up to Beasley Coliseum for Academic Night, the Cougars slowly worked down Seattle maintaining a steady lead and one of their best defensive performances of the season.
Despite the win, it was a tough game offensively for the Cougars despite good shooting splits. While shooting 56% from the field, they had it counteracted from multiple steals and turnovers being forced from Seattle. The Cougars wound up with 19 turnovers but with great defense they ended up with the double digit victory.
Freshman Ace Glass dribbles the basketball against Seattle University on Jan. 28 2026.
When the Cougars went into the half leading 36-30 due to great shooting at 63% and 45% from three. Junior forward Rihards Vavers was a key to the game with 16 first half points to keep the Cougars offense well balanced shooting wise. The defense was stepping up as well for WSU only giving up 33% from the field and 11% from three. The only issue for the half was the wholesale amount of turnovers.
The Cougars wound up with 12 turnovers in the first half, along with 10 fouls. Those Cougar mistakes are what kept the Redhawks in the game going into the second-half.
Halfway through the second half, the Redhawks kept it close with the Cougars who were still leading but only by four at 46-42.
To pick up the Cougars struggles at every point in the game was Vavers, and some aggressive offense got the Cougars offense moving once again. With the high number of fouls in the first half, both teams kept this pace and WSU ended up with 20 fouls in the game and 21 for the Redhawks.
Vavers hit the dagger three pointer from the right corner while falling down to energize the WSU bench and crowd to take a 12 point lead with only two minutes left. Only a minute after his 3-pointer he slammed down a dunk to put the nail in Seattle’s coffin.
ND Okafor stands under the basket in a game against the Seattle University basketball team on Jan. 28 2026.
The Cougars defense had one of their best performances of the season, only giving up three 3-pointers at 14.3%. Head coach David Riley was happier with this performance and hopes for more games like this in the future.
“I’m really proud of this team for taking a step over the last month,” Riley said. “They really do what we emphasize and now hopefully we can just kind of touch everything a little bit more because we are not fixing things at this point.”
The win for the Cougars didn’t move them in the WCC conference rankings but they are now even in conference play at 5-5.
The Cougars will get a chance to go above .500 in conference play when they play the Portland Pilots at 3 p.m. Saturday.
