Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen for Cougar fans Wednesday night in Beasley Coliseum was when a fan knocked down a half-court shot and won $1,600 during a timeout. Meanwhile, the WSU men’s basketball team avoided getting blown out by No. 23/20 Arizona, but never really threatened the Wildcats’ second-half lead.

The Wildcats (18-5, 6-4 Pac-12) cruised to a 79-64 victory to extend the Cougars’ (9-12, 1-8) losing streak to eight games and keep them alone in the Pac-12’s cellar.

The Cougars, like they have so many times this season, played their superiorly talented opponent close for nearly the entire first half, at one point leading the Wildcats 17-9. But nine first-half turnovers and a rising UA field goal percentage – was as low as 21 percent after the first seven minutes, and they ended the half at 44 percent – gave the Wildcats the chance to end the half on a 14-4 run in the last five minutes and take a 39-30 lead into the locker room.

“We lost the game, and there’s not really any moral victories at this point in the season,” WSU junior forward Josh Hawkinson said, who quietly picked up his conference-leading 16th double-double Wednesday with 14 points and 17 rebounds.

From that point on it was all Arizona, starting the second half on a 19-9 run to take a 58-39 lead at the 11:45 mark, and they never looked back.

“I don’t see a team that quits at all, I see a team that forgets,” WSU Head Coach Ernie Kent said in the postgame news conference. “What I mean by that is they need to have a mental toughness on a possession-by-possession basis, know your job and do your job without one guy breaking down.”

Senior forward Ryan Anderson paced the Wildcats the whole way, scoring a game-high 31 points and pulling down 12 rebounds in a game where the Wildcats outscored the Cougs 36-22 in the paint. He put an exclamation point on his night when he threw down a two-handed dunk over WSU redshirt junior center Conor Clifford in the second half. He converted a free throw to complete the three-point play and give UA a 55-37 lead.

Setting the tone for the fast start was junior guard Ike Iroegbu, who began the game with a six-second outburst that featured a missed lay-up off of junior forward Josh Hawkinson’s tipoff, a rebound, and a put-back where he got fouled by UA sophomore guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright. His first consequential misstep of the game was when he missed the and-1 free throw.

“I feel like we’ve been coming out pretty good in these last couple games, with the starts,” Iroegbu said. “We’ve just gotta keep that momentum going instead of having a good six, seven minutes of basketball and then slowing down.”

WSU tried mounting a comeback midway through the second half, putting together an 11-2 run to cut UA’s lead to 61-53 with 8:47 to play, but they couldn’t keep the momentum going, as eight points was the closest the Cougs would get to the Wildcats in the second half.

Midway through the first quarter, junior guard Charles Callison hit the floor hard after missing a layup and appeared to sustain a mild injury above his right eye, though it didn’t cause him to miss any time. A couple other players got roughed up by the Wildcats as well in a game the players described as “very physical.”

“Arizona’s a very physical team and is tough to battle,” Callison said. “Just very tough and physical.”

Redshirt junior center Valentine Izundu apparently participated in practice this week after a foot injury kept him out of the Cougars’ last seven games. Izundu was suited up Wednesday night, but he never took off his warm-up top. Kent said on Tuesday that his team’s most dangerous shot-blocker was a game-time decision.

The Cougars will try to snap their losing skid when they host the Arizona State Sun Devils, Saturday. Tipoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on the Pac-12 Networks.