After picking up their first Pac-12 win of the season against Utah on Sunday, the Washington State men’s basketball team will head to the Bay Area this week for a couple of Pac-12 road games. The Cougars (8-8, 1-3) will start off their Bay Area road trip in the Silicon Valley to play the Stanford Cardinal Wednesday night.

There are four critical components at play when WSU takes on the Cardinal (10-5, 1-2) on Wednesday.

Taking on a bigger role

WSU men’s basketball Head Coach Ken Bone announced in a press conference Tuesday that WSU guard and the team’s leading scorer DaVonte Lacy would not be able to play for three to five more weeks after getting the results of a CT scan. Lacy suffered from appendicitis at the end of December and came back to play in the Arizona State game on Jan. 5, in which he suffered a rib injury. Before the injury Lacy led the team in scoring with 17.7 points per game.  

With Lacy out, the players on this team will have to take on a larger role. The minutes will increase for some players (specifically the guards), which means they must produce on the court.

Redshirt junior Dexter Kernich-Drew said with the loss of Lacy and his scoring, the team has stepped up. One of the players to step up has been redshirt freshman Que Johnson, who since Lacy’s absence has averaged 12.8 points a game.

“He (Johnson) continues to get a little bit better in different ways at what we think every game,” Bone said. “The other night (against Utah) he was good, he got to the free throw line and got 13 free throws which was by far the most he shot all year… our whole team shot three (free throws) against Colorado, so for him to get to the line and shoot 13 in one game was a great improvement.”

Besides Johnson stepping up, Kernich-Drew has scored in double figures the past two games including a team-high 24 points in the overtime loss to Colorado.

Playing with Confidence:

After an embarrassing road trip to Arizona, the Cougars have played with more confidence in the past two games. Even though the Cougars lost to Colorado, they took the No. 15 ranked team down to the wire. The Cougars also got their first Pac-12 win of the season last Sunday against Utah, which Kernich-Drew said was a confidence booster.

“Everyone’s confidence is up and everyone feels real good about themselves,” Kernich-Drew said. “Obviously we’ve seen how we played together against Colorado even though we didn’t get the win, we saw what we can do against anyone, and I guess that just going to keep rolling over and hopefully can create a lot more wins as we keep pushing forward in the season.”

Contain the big men of Stanford:

While the Cougars have been playing against solid guard play these past two games, now they will match up against the talented Stanford big men, which Bone said will be a tough matchup to defend.

“The challenge against Stanford is not just that they’re big or tall but they’re very athletic,” Bone said. “Powell and Huestis are both 6-foot-8, 6-foot-9, (or) 6-foot-10 but it’s the fact that they’re long, athletic and that can cause problems when they’re on defense and offensively those kids are very quick and bouncy so they’re hard to guard.”

Dwight Powell of Stanford averages 14.3 points and 7.5 points a game so far this season. Stanford’s other big man, Josh Huestis, averages 10.5 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.3 blocks.

Handling the Road

The Cougars will be playing their third Pac-12 road game on Wednesday when they face off against Stanford. The Cougars have played one Pac-12 game at Beasley Coliseum and three away from Pullman so far this season. Those three games away from Beasley Coliseum the Cougars went 0-3, and they will need to able to handle the hostile environment the Stanford crowd will provide.

“Playing in a hostile environment, just kind of gets your blood flowing, gets you working hard,” WSU forward Junior Longrus said. “Hopefully we’ll have a few more fans than we usually would on the road, but I can’t wait to get on the road, hopefully it’s a packed crowd for both (Bay Area) games, I love that.”

The last road trip the Cougars played was the first week of January against Arizona. Playing against Arizona, the Cougars only scored 25 points the entire game and against Arizona State, the team scored only 47.