In what was a thrilling back-and-forth battle for the first half, the Cougars offense goes ice cold to end up losing by 16 in their final game at home.
Head coach David Riley attributed a lot of the messy play in the second half to mental toughness.
“You got to learn how to be mentally tougher through another punch, sometimes they’re gonna throw two, and that’s where this team needs to grow,” he said.
A couple of plays went awry for WSU, with missed layups, fumbled rebounds or air-balled 3-pointers from consistent scorers.
The Cougars played great to start, scoring 39 points and seven 3-pointers in the first half, but they wound up losing by double digits due to a second half where they were only able to put up 28 points on 33% shooting.
The star of the game for Washington State was between two players in ND Okafor and Ace Glass. Okafor was a force in the paint with multiple big dunks along with a couple shifty and ones. Glass had multiple and ones for himself as well to lead the team in scoring in the second-half with 12 points. Both players finished with 15 points on decent shooting both around the 50% mark from the field.
The biggest crisis on the offense between the first and second half was the 3-point shooting. The Cougars attempted seven shots from behind the arc in the second, but made zero.
In the postgame press conference, Okafor attributed Saint Mary’s defense leading to the lack of offense.
Going into the matchup, Saint Mary’s had the best defense in the West Coast conference, only giving up 67 points per game. In the previous matchup earlier in the season, Washington State scored 82 points, which was the second highest Saint Mary’s had given up. Unfortunately, for the Cougars on senior night, they were unable to match the same offensive success they had in their first matchup.
Guarding the paint for Saint Mary’s was two seven-foot-tall centers who switched in and out of the game. Andrew McKeever a 7-foot-3 center and Harry Wessels a 7-foot-1 center secured the paint which made a nightmare scenario for any player on the Cougar offense driving downhill.
The first half did have multiple highlights in star moments from Washington State. Guard Jerone Morton had two straight step back threes to light up Beasley Coliseum after some tight defense from the Gaels.
Other stars of the half include Rihards Vavers whose hot streak seemed to be continued, not missing to start going 3-for-3 from the field and two 3-pointers to go along with it. Vavers would end up with 12 points in the game and only making one of four shots in the second half.
The senior players for the Cougars Simon Hildebrandt and Adria Rodriguez got appreciation before and during the game, but couldn’t find team success. Rodriguez in 26 minutes was an on-ball menace grabbing two steals and a couple deflections to go along with it. Hildebrandt got seven minutes of action with no stats besides one personal foul.
Riley attributes a lot of the success for programs like Saint Mary’s to consistency in their roster and funding.
“It’s really hard to be successful if you don’t have continuity. You look at the conference and the teams that are winning it, there’s a direct correlation with how much money you have to pay players and where you finish in the conference,” he said.
There are two more regular season matchups for WSU to determine their seeding in the WCC. The Cougars currently sit in the sixth seed half a game behind Pacific and half a game ahead of San Francisco.
When asked about the potential of this team, coach Riley gave a positive outlook.
“We can beat anyone, and we gotta go take it one game at a time, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t walk into a game with a ton of confidence based on how we play the different stretches of the season,” he said.
The next matchup for WSU is at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Los Angeles against LMU.
